Exercise in “value”

I’ve been meeting with a group of quilters once a month as we go through Joen Wolfrom’s book Adventures in Design. This month’s chapter was on value and the exercise at the end of the chapter that I chose to do was to:

A. Create a design that moves the value from light in the central area to dark in the outer perimeter.

B. Create a design that moves the value from dark in the central area to light at the outer perimeter.  The following is what I came up with. (Disclaimer:  I have had a terrible time photographing the pink. Sorry!)

Value exercise

This fabric was dyed by me during a workshop a couple summers ago.  I had 5 different values of the same pink which I cut into 2 inch squares and then pieced together to make these backgrounds.  I didn’t want to make absolute “bull’s eyes” so I mixed the square pieces up somewhat.  The background was pretty heavily but easily quilted. I then fused the little birds and the green “thing” they are standing on to the background and did a free motion straight stitch with black thread to the edges.  The eyes are little black seed beads. I really like the look of this.  I guess it looks sort of cartoonish.

Close up of bird

I wanted to make them into something useful so guess what I chose to do with them?  Well, not EVERYONE I know has a notebook cover yet, so. . . .

Finished notebook covers.

Linking up to Quilt Story’s Fabric Tuesday.