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Get dynamic results with color and pattern!
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Tips & Techniques
Designs in Motion
Are you searching for ways to make your quilts more lively, more exciting? Would you like your viewers to linger longer, exploring the color, the pattern and the fabric choices you've made to discover how you achieved such an intriguing design? If so, consider creating the illusion of motion in your quilt.
You can employ simple design devices that will invite the eyes to follow a line or a progression or search for differences or similarities. Of course, the quilt doesn't move; your eyes move and that movement creates the illusion of motion over the surface. Your quilts will convey more energy and your viewers will be delighted.
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Choose Patterns with Diagonal Lines
Whereas vertical and horizontal lines indicate stability and balance, a diagonal line conveys motion. Is it leaning? Falling? Stretching? Will it, can it stay where it is? All is unpredictable. The center square in the block shown at right tips slightly in contrast to the stable vertical and horizontal squares in the sashing.
Quilts made from this block are engaging because the center squares are unbalanced, but the repetition makes us comfortable. For a more jumbled effect, each block could tip the center squares in the opposite direction.
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The half-square triangles in the Minuet block, shown at right, twirl us in all directions. If the background patches were a medium blue rather than the contrasting cream, the quilt would be less active.
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High contrast between a patch with a diagonal line and its surroundings intensifies the feeling of motion. Study the pinwheel block shown at right. Areas of greater contrast seem more active than where the fabrics are closer in value.
