Visual Decisions on Value

After Monday's post about where my pinwheel quilt was going, it was quite apparent to me, that I needed to go back to the design process.  For me, that always involves my sketch pad or graph paper, my favorite sketch pencils and something to color with.

Earlier this year, I took my AC Moore coupon and bought myself a set of the 150 Crayola Crayon Tower.  I mean who doesn't need 150 of their favorite colors????  With this project, I finally got a chance to break them out and give them a test drive.  Let me just say - LOVE IT.  If you don't have a set yet - go get yourself one - just for you though - nobody under 18 allowed!!

With my favorite tools at hand, a novel playing on my mp3 player, I started to color in the trapezoid graph paper I found in a quilt book.  They had set it up to be colored in by triangles but I made them into pinwheels.  It took a good hour but still I got to try out a value placement - plus look at how many pinwheels I needed.  The final answer 233 Pinwheels!  Which of course means that I'm only about half way there!  sighhhhhhhh

Its does seem like a lot of wheels left to go - especially doing it all by hand, but as I always said, English paper piecing isn't a technique  - its a vocation!

That said, I'm still on the quest to find just the right layout.  The reason that I need to figure it out now, is to come up with an approximation of how many light, medium, dark wheels I need.  Its all fine and good to get the 233 done but if they aren't the right value - well  that means more work!  So I did manage to make a few value drawings. Again - - I'm not really happy with any of them!   I won't bore you with all the options but I did make about half a dozen of them.

Actually, I think the one that I like the best was an arrow of light coming in from the right side and making a point surrounded by dark.  Still, as I learned many years ago, its best to "Make visual decisions, visually."   Which of course means that I'll eventually have to put them all up on the design board and try some of these sketches out.


But with all those blocks needing to be made, I'm sure that won't be anytime soon!