First of all, I have to say that I have taken all sorts of pictures of this little quilt and I simply can't get the colors to look the way it looks in real life. I think one of the issues is that it's made totally of silk dupioni, and the sheen changes the way the colors reflect. But when you look at this, be aware that the brown in this photo looks fairly accurate but the color bursts are much brighter in person. The yellow is a vibrant marigold, the red is a good shiny red, and the one that looks gold (next to the yellow in the middle) is more caramel colored than it looks here. I apparently have to hone my photography and Photoshop skills to get this looking right, but all I know is that I've spent all afternoon working on this, and if the brown is the right color, the bright colors look dull, and if I make the bright colors look right, the brown turns too red. I'm sorry to post a blah picture and to have to explain -- if I can get it better I'll replace it later. The hand-stitched bits look much brighter in person, too.
Yes, it's STUNNING in real life. If it looks boring here, it's the photography. (Grin.)
That said, I've had a good time working on this -- and look, it's ABSTRACT! Aren't you impressed?! I was thinking about how one uses spices in cooking -- how little bits of spice can go a long way. So that's the general theme at work here -- vibrant notes of spice enhancing larger and plainer set of ingredients.
This is actually the second spice quilt I made. Here's the first one I made:
The colors in this are off also -- yes, it's all dupioni again. And I was working with the same ideas, thinking about adding bits of spice to a recipe and using pops of flavor to brighten a recipe. But as much as I like this (and had a great time making it), it struck me as too similar to my
"rust colors" piece. So I went in a different direction and came up with "Burst of Flavor" above.
Thanks, Helen, for a delicious challenge theme!