Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Color Bars


I'm still enjoying making free-form quilts. Here are three I've finished recently.

Color Bars - Yellow
30.5 x 29
Color Bars - Purple
16.5 x 10
 
Color Bars - Red/Black
36.5 x 22
 

2 comments:

Tanya A. Brown said...

Have you been sewing these together as strips, or sewing them to a foundation before piecing larger blocks?

The foundation method lends stability and, I suppose, lets one easily deal with fabric edges which are curved or uneven. However, it gets fiddly what with all of the constant ironing and trimming.

The strip method might be swifter, but I've run into issues when some of my "found" strips are wonky.

All the best,
T

Martha Ginn said...

Tanya, thanks for commenting! I do not use a foundation, although I agree it would add stability. Since I don't have a specific pattern or size in mind, these are literally built free-form in units that please me (mainly by color choice). Some units are sliced and rejoined to add more interest. To cure wonkiness, the edges are clean-cut and sometimes have other strips or borders added.

The units can stand alone, framed or mounted on matboard or painted gallery-wrapped canvas or they can be combined by adding strips to make the units fit together.

My favorite edge treatment (for small pieces) is a rattail cord zig-zagged around. Carol Ann Waugh has a great tutorial on this edge method.