Last night I stuck it out until all the rows and corner were filled in with brown squares. There’s always a change that happens when there’s nothing for your brain to fill in. It changes from what’s in my head being imagined to what’s there in actual fabric and cut up bits.
At this point, I like to look at it some. Could be a bit or a few days. Other than the obvious too-dark, too-light, too-repetitive areas, I wouldn’t be able to put what I’m looking at in particular.
It helps to squint at the whole deal to rule out value problems. I guess I try to look at the fabrics themselves. Occasionally I’ll miss some blotch of a dot because it’s tucked under another square. Those are usually pretty obvious when sewing them together.
I’ll always remember the lady at a Vermont Quilt Festival who pulled me over to my displayed quilt to tell me about how there was a mistake in it. I let her show me what she meant – a darker grey area in a quilt that was mostly blues and white. I agreed in my head that standing a foot away from the surface, the grey was too-dark looking.
The lady was quite adamant in her comments about my mistake and i couldn’t get her to walk away from the quilt to look at it a little further away. Nor was she interested in any idea of dark areas of clouds or skies.
When she left me there with the quilt, I looked at it awhile from close up. Then I went back to a normal viewing distance. The darker grey area receded into the rest of the quilt. From further away, it hardly showed at all, except as a variation of color and value.
A lot of people have trouble with the gray areas…but you know that already! And, of course, perspective and willingness to see things from another point of view are always part of the solution,
Best of luck with those browns. Sounds like you’ve set yourself yet another epic challenge. I’ll stay tuned.
Like the quote, as usual!
AJ