LRT2 - Design by Camera

The next stage was to figure out how to combine the colours and fabrics in the quilt. I’ve taken to using what I’ve come to call ‘quilting with my camera’ to solve these sorts of challenges. I find after staring at a combination for a while my brain gets tired thinking about it, so I rearrange all the fabrics/pieces, take photos of them then ignore them for a couple of days and then look at the pictures on my computer. For some unknown reason, I can make a better judgment about balancing prints, colours, values and shapes looking at the digital version of the design rather than the real thing – strange but true. Try it next time you’re not sure what to do with your project next.

The design by camera falls into a number of sections. First I looked at how to join the squares…
Then how to join the square-rectangle units (which are a charm square chain pieced with a blue rectangle – see the chain piecing post)…
Then how to join the strips of squares and rectangles… And some possibilities for borders around the central strips…
The important thing to note here is also that although I’ve presented the pictures above as a set of sequential steps, what I was really doing was a mixture of all of the above at different times. It’s just a process of put, look, photograph and think some more, until you figure out what works the best.

Try the design by camera technique on your project and share your experience with some comments on this post.

BERT