I was finally able to spend some quality time working on my Sunset Quilt, one of the two projects I have planned for the Fire element for Project Spectrum. I had the idea for this quilt after seeing a picture of a stick silhouetted against a red and orange streaked sunset sky (it’s barely visible in the upper left of the photo above). It was shortly after I’d read Joen Wolfrom’s Landscapes and Illusions, and the colored streaks of the sky seemed to ideally suite the strip quilting method outlined in the book.
I’ve been collecting fabric for the better part of a year. (Actually, I think it’s been longer than a year, but I really don’t remember when I started.) It’s been surprisingly hard going. I was looking for a particular quality of orangish reds, and oranges and yellows to go with them. It would seem that more bluish reds are more popular for quilting, as that was what I was finding in most of my travels. Still, I’d managed to get a decent collection by this past summer, but try as I might, I couldn’t find any combinations that worked in a way that was reminiscent of the sunset picture. I finally took the picture out and stared at it for a while, and realized I was missing purple. Purple isn’t a color I associate with a fiery sunset, but it’s actually there, in little bits. So, I’ve been trying since summer to find an adequate purple. It literally wasn’t until my last run to Joann’s a couple weeks ago, when I happened to take a run by the fat quarter wall, and finally found a purple that worked.
So, this morning, I took out the accumulated stack and started arranging. Interestingly, by adding the dark purple, I realized I needed to take out the yellow and some of the lighter oranges I’d found. While the photo I was working from has some true yellows and light oranges, I found that I liked a combinations of purple, various reds and medium to dark oranges better.
I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to add a strip of “ground” like the inspiration photo or not, but I have plenty of the fabric to do the foreground branch that I can use for the ground if I decide to. I choose a solid dark brown for this, figuring the solid color would be a better play against the mottled background, since the background is actually supposed to be the focus.