Court House Steps Complementary Tints Color Study Quilt

Court House Step Complementary Tints Quilt. 40.5 x 48.5 inches (Photo bombed by Waldorf doll Molly Mae)!

Here’s my Court House Steps color study quilt from my previous post.

I’ve done a number of quilts this year which I have quilted by echoing the blocks. It’s easy enough to quilt around the blocks on a small quilt with a walking foot, but I decided to do free motion quilting on this one.

I thought about putting a spiral or a loopy daisy flower in the green center block, both free-motion quilting designs I do a lot. But what else would work well? I took two books by Angela Walters off my shelf to see what inspiration I could find.

I found the four-petal leaf motif in Shape by Shape: Free-motion Quilting with Angela Walters in the chapter on Squares (and Rectangles). It’s Square 7 in the book. I don’t do well with free-motion straight lines and this design requires the quilter to “travel” along the edge of the block to get to the second side of the X. There is nothing precious about this quilt, so I decided to go for it! My traveling lines did improve as I quilted more of the blocks, but none of them are perfect. But you know what? This leaf design has a really organic feel and I like the the fact that all the quilting in that central block is slightly irregular. And I love that you can tell it was sewn by a person and wasn’t a computer driven design.

Still puzzled about how to quilt the bars around the central square I took a look at another of Angela Walter’s books, Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters. i haven’t looked at the book in years (published 2012) so I was pleasantly surprised to see a has a chapter on quilting Square-in-a-Square and Log Cabin quilts. And most of the log cabin quilts in the chapter have Court House Steps blocks. Perfect! She offered a number of suggestions but then I noticed one quilt with a bar that had a lazy cruved line with an occasional loop. I like loopy lines. And with swirls in Tula Pink’s “Measure Twice” fabric in my border, that struck the right cord. Angela only had an occasional loop in her quilted curve so mine is different because it is mostly loops!

Angela is well known for quilting every square inch in a quilt, but I like to leave open areas to let the quilt puff up a bit after it has been washed. So quilted all the hot pink bars and left the light pin bars open. There is straight line walking foot quilting around each of the Court House Step blocks, so everything really is tacked down adequately!

This was fun. And Molly Mae says she likes it!

Color Study: Complemetary Tints in a Courthouse Steps Quilt Top

As promised in my last post, here’s what I did with that Courthouse Steps Pattern that wasn’t right for the fox fabric. However, this design is perfect for a color study!

It’s been a long time since my series of 4 color studies. (Click to see the first color study. The next 3 follow with a gap of one post right after the first). But it’s been on my mind to do another color study and I have had this stack of two pinks and the light slightly yellow green in my do-to-queue since last summer.

Red and green are complimentary colors—exactly opposite each other on the color wheel. Pink and light green are tints of red and green so they are compliments. A tint is a hue (color) that has had white added to it. Complimentary colors tend to be visually a bit eye-popping, and this quilt is definitely that!

Fortunately, Tula Pink was thinking along the same color lines when she designed the “Measure Twice” fabric for Free Spirit Fabrics which is my outer border. It’s also the backing for this quilt. Her fabric really helps to make sense of my color choices.

So how does that light baby blue inner border fit into this color scheme? It doesn’t! I auditioned the green and the hot pink as the inner border, but neither made me happy. The light blue fabric was sitting in a stack nearby and I just picked it up, tried it out, and loved it! In this vibrant quilt, that light blue border is the only place the eye can rest! So that’s why I added to the quilt.

The fox and gnome fabrics from my last post are stewing on a back burner. I haven’t figured out how best to use them! They will reappear eventually!

"Dream Big" Panel Color Study

Back in 2014 I started writing some color study posts. (Look above at the top of the page for a gallery of some of studies). The first post color study featured complimentary colors in a quilt I called “Crosses and Losses”. Here is a picture of the finished “Crosses and Losses” quilt. Since they I’ve done a number of color study quilts.

This is my latest color study a quilt It’s also another of this year’s panel play quilts. This panel is a digital print by Hoffman called “Dream Big-Fire”

I like the way that complimentary colors (those directly opposite each other on the color wheel) can create a visual vibration. The “Crosses and Losses” quilt really vibrates! Almost too much. Yellow and blue are complimentary colors. The complimentary color for orange is teal. So blue isn’t the true compliment of the colors in this flower….it’s off by one position on the color wheel. But it does create a visual vibration.. So I’m happy with my choice.

Here is the original panel.

I cut the panel horizontally in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and almost 9 inch strips. I sewed the medium blue strips cut at 1 1/2 inches between each of the panel strips.

A quilt with just the horizontal strips would be a great place to stop. I really like it with just these blue strips.

But I carried on. I cut the panel again in strips using the same widths as above, only cutting this time across the new piece vertically. I had enough Kona© Cotton blues to create a gradient of blue strips, starting with white. These strips are slightly narrower, cut at 1 1/4 inches.

Here’s the back. The orange and blue theme continues! This Connecting Threads orange leaf fabric has been in my stash for years. I glad it’s finally found a perfect home!

Orange and blue! Another really bright quilt for 2020! It’s perfect for October! Maybe I should call it “Pumpkin Spice’! (Or maybe not)!!

(Note the run of gradient blues I put in on the binding)!