Lights, Camera, Action (or try again)

Since my last post I haven't gotten much done.  We went camping for 3 days down in Tate's Hell National Forest near Carrabelle, FL.  It was a much needed break for all 4 of us. But on the days around this little break it seemed like I was on a treadmill.  So progress on backings and purging was non-existent.  

We had the power go out one night and I decided to do a little prep work by candle light.  I grabbed a project box off the stack and proceeded to review it.  The Pattern is Missouri Star Quilt Company's Super Simple Squares. I am sure this was a freebie since there is no way I paid $9.00 for this pattern.

The fabric is 6 charm packs called Greenery by Maywood Studios and a white tone on tone jelly roll by Riley Blake studios. I got one of the charm packs as a freebie. I loved the line.  The pattern called for 3 packs but with the white sashing, I didn't think the lighter colors would work. So I doubled the number of charm packs thinking I would only use the darker colors.         With project box in hand, I set out to sort the colors by candle light and that is when I hit upon some of re-discoveries.

Lights (and/or lighting) - I have been taking lighting for granted the past few years. I have four 8 foot banks of fluorescence lights in my studio.  My husband and son installed them right before I got my long arm. They are very bright and make working on anything really easy.  

When I laid out my fabric to determine which I could use and which to set aside, the candle light was misleading. The dim light didn't allow me to see the true contrast in the colors. Going by the candle light, I was planning to set aside four of the 11 fabrics that I didn't feel would stand out against the white sashing. 

When the lights came back on I was surprised to see that I could use all of the fabrics.  The light gray still showed up against the white sashing. Lighting is important.

Camera - is the next re-discovery.  I've talked about taking pictures for layouts and record keeping but modern cameras have all sorts of gadgets that we can use. Since this pattern is so simple a lot of the design depends on the contrast between the sashing and the blocks.  I knew that all of the fabric showed up against the white sashing but how much contrast did it really have. I really wanted the squares to stand out.  So I took a picture of the fabric and filtered it to black and white. 

By applying the black and white filter I get a good sense of the true values of the fabric. Some of the prints I considered light actually were a medium value and one print I thought was a medium value was actually a dark value.  But this didn't show me the contrast with the sashing so I took the picture with the lights on and applied the filter to it. 

This showed me that there wasn't enough contrast between the sashing and two of the prints. So I was going to take out all of those squares. That meant I wasn't going to use 7 charms out of each pack.  Now I had planned on not using 21 charms out of each pack so I was way ahead of the game. Now was the time for the 3rd discovery. 

Action - I define this as doing something and that includes making decisions.  I have 6 charm packs. I could make the quilt as the pattern directs and have lots of left over squares, or I could make it bigger and use up most of the squares.  Since I am still in purge mode, I decided bigger.  That meant doing math. I speak math so that's not a problem for me. I had to figure out how many squares to cut for corner stones and how many sashing strips to cut.  When I got through doing the math, I realized that I would need half a jelly roll more. So I went on line to see if I could get it. I bought all this stuff 2 years ago so of course I was out of luck.

I was now faced with ordering 2 jelly rolls or making the original quilt. I decided to go with the original. I am, after all, trying to use my stash. Then I thought about looking in my stash for white jelly rolls.  Unfortunately I didn't have two matching white jelly rolls. I did have two in black but that wasn't the look I wanted. So back to the original again. Then I realized that what I do have is a bunch of white fabric. I rolled up the jelly roll and put it the stash. I will cut my own strips. It would have been easy to just do the pattern, not thought to it, but going forward and figuring out how to use most of the squares allows me to work on another goal. Reducing the stash. Nothing gets accomplished without action. Even small steps are action.

Of course all this didn't yield a lot of progress. But it did a couple of things for me.  It reduced stress. It helped me get a two year old project off the ground. And it got me looking at my stash.  I really need to go through it all. And I really need to organize the studio so I can access it all. 

What have you taken for granted lately? What have you re-discovered?