Program Details

We’ve completed three steps in the series of directed exercises designed to help you work in an improvisational style.

Month One:  Piece four blocks of your choice, using whatever color scheme you want. 

At the next meeting, we shared the blocks we pieced, and I presented the exercise for Month Two:  Using Month One’s blocks as a guide, choose a complementary color scheme and vary the scale of the prints you use. 

The discussion included illustrations of the complementary and split-complementary color schemes:

The next month, after looking at everyone’s blocks using a complementary color scheme and making suggestions (the subtitle of this program is “learning from one another”), the discussion focused on the design.  The design line is influenced by value.  Examples were provided on site, as well as the following illustrations: 

The Storm at Sea pattern here shows how the use of color can blur the block edges.  Changing the value also affects where the eye sees the block boundaries. 

The directed exercise for Months Three and Four have been merged to cover two months simultaneously, depending upon which aspect you wish to cover first. 

The next diagram shows how the proportional aspects of the blocks can be changed by splitting a block, removing elements, and repeating elements of the block.  The block can also be changed from a square to a rectangle.  All these ideas are covered in Lynn Kough’s book, Stretching Tradition. 

For June, come to the meeting with 12 to 16 blocks.  We’ll put them on the design wall, and see what needs to be filled in to accomplish the next stage….. Note:  the June timeline for this part of the program has been postponed until after the July meeting (which means more time working on blending the blocks!).