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Color Study 2: Monochromatic

The next concept is the one-color or monochromatic quilt. I chose blue since I have a lot of blue fabrics, but any color can be used. An achromatic quilt is monochromatic using shades of gray/black. Here, I chose a horizontal composition. I’ve tried VERY hard to work more abstractly since I prefer representational stuff, but I can’t seem to move away entirely. In my head, this is waves, shading from lighter at the top to darker at the bottom.

Here’s the back of the quilt–simple: white top, black bottom, solid medium blue in the center, with a number 1 as the symbol for this type of quilt.

The front of the quilt isn’t strictly monochromatic…some of my batiks had some blues that really ranged into the green area, but at least they are blue-green, and into the purples, but a very deep blue-y purple (or is it a purple-y blue?). This is one thing you have to contend with when working in commercial fabrics (as opposed to dyeing your own)….what you have in your stash or available for sale determines what you’ll have in your quilt. But you get the idea:

Some of the most striking traditional quilts are monochromatic. I fell in love with a Mariner’s Compass pattern by Mary K. Ryan that, a few eons ago (the 80s) appeared on the cover of Quilters’ Newsletter Magazine. That became my second quilt, and I still totally love it and the monochromatic color scheme:

But it seems to me that the majority of art quilts use other color principles. I know that monochromatic art quilts exist, but they seem to compose an even smaller percentage of the genre than in traditional quilts. What do you think?

And just because I couldn’t resist, and because this Mariners’ Compass quilt is probably one of maybe two full sized quilts I’ll ever quilt entirely by hand (the other will be my Dear Jane, if and when I ever get back to working on it….ahem), here are two close ups. The first is of the dolphin quilted into the front (there are also orcas). The second shot is of the white back, where you can see how much quilting there is…MILES!

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