March 10, 2013

Designing a quilt by drawing in Microsoft Word

During a longish intermission at a concert recently, I looked around the church for something to draw.   My eye was caught by the simple pattern of the wood panelling on one wall, so I made a rough sketch, with some guesses about spacing (1x, 2x, 3x):


I've been meaning to learn how to do simple drawings in Word for a while--I haven't been able to figure it out on my own just from messing around with the Drawing toolbar.  It occurred to me that this simple drawing would be a good way to start out.  So, I googled "Drawing in Word" and got all the help I needed.  This YouTube video got me started; various other sites give more detailed info.  Here's the drawing I made with Word, the plain sketch and then one quick stab at colors:



Now I can have fun trying out different colors.  It's also daunting--in simple designs with few shapes, each choice of color and value has a very loud voice.   I have a great set of Color-aid papers, 314 colors (thank you Rick!).  I have been hesitant to do much cutting up of the papers (each of my swatches is 4.5x6"), but I think they're just the thing to help me with this project.

Now, where to put this in my line-up.  Things currently in progress:
  • Large piece on "Regret."  I'm just now finishing up the dyeing of the fabric for this piece, and hope to get much of the construction done this week.  This is my main priority right now.
  • Finishing up hand-sewing the binding on my shot cotton "Spectrum" quilt.
  • Getting started on a quilt in which I'll be doing an improvised version of a rail fence quilt.
  • Following up from a recent workshop with Lotta Jansdottir to do some stencilling.  Today I took this drawing from last summer
 
and changed it into this, which I'm hoping to make into a stencil:
 
I'll start by cutting just one branch, to see how it works.  The image might be better for a thermofax screen than a stencil. 

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