Working With Color Completed

1930 Crazy Quilt Block
Originally uploaded by Kitty And Me.

I think you can see now where the logic is to my style of craziness. I balance my blocks by repeating my fabrics and my colors and working in opposites or across from each other.

For those of you who have followed this quick little lesson in how I work, Mad Stitcher was correct when she guessed that I would use yellow in the top right-hand corner. It balances with the yellow flowers in the applique.

Those yellow flowers by the way, are not the cast-on stitch that Sharon has shown us. I tried and tried but had a terrible time working directly on the fabric. Once I reached the point of giving up on that idea, I pulled out my handy-dandy tatting needle and worked my cast-on stitch flowers off site. Then I just sewed them onto my block.

For adding beads, the process is the same. As you can see, I added some red flower beads to the blue lace on the right. That balances with the red buttonhole flowers on the top left.

I used red buttons for the centers of the yellow flowers in the applique along with few red bugle beads. Again, this balances with the fabric on the top right.

Button clusters work the same way. I like to pick a "focal point" button and then add smaller buttons around it in similiar colors to the quilt. The big red button is the focal point. Once the focal point is established, the eye can move around to see what else is there. Without a focal point, the eye doesn't know where to start looking.

Lastly, I added just a few beads to the flowers in the hankie print. Without the beads, it looked like I forgot something! I also added the gold dragonfly charm. This definately gives the eye a place to start!

The block is complete now. I hope this quick tutorial helps you to understand how I work with color. I use the same process when I design my charted patterns as well.

Again, there is no right or wrong with crazyquilting. This is just my way of doing it. If you're seriously considering a good lesson in crazyquilting, I strongly suggest watching for Sharon's next class over at Joggles.com. Sharon is a master crazyquilter and she is truly the one to learn from. I had so much wanted to take her last class but my work schedule didn't permit it.