Have You Ever Wondered How A Quilter Can Take Fabric and Create a Quilt That Looks 3 Dimensional?
By: Penny Halgren
For many years, my quilts were traditional patchwork blocks or simple applique quilts.
One year we took a two week driving vacation from through the Redwoods in Northern California.
Camping.
With a 4 year old and a 2 year old.
During the summer.
It was great fun.
Maybe.
I have mostly put it out of my mind - for the sake of my sanity.
On the return trip, we decided to drive through Arizona and New Mexico.
It gets hot there.
And it is especially bad when the air conditioning in your 1962 Studebaker breaks, it is 1985, and there are no auto parts stores that carry parts to fix it.
And at midnight when you are driving through Yuma and it is 102 degrees, you dump a bucket of cold water on your kids to keep them cool, and don’t even worry about the car because you know that within 5 seconds, all of the water will have evaporated, cooling down the can’t-sleep-because-they-are-overheated children for about 20 seconds.
And you. Well, dump the water on, too - it’s wet t-shirt time! But no music and dancing in the night club. Just hot.
And, at that temperature, who really cares that it is dry heat? It’s just HOT!
Great memories.
I wonder. Frankly I would have rather been sitting at the beach dumping salt water on the kids to cool off.
But, all of that is somewhat beside the point.
The point is that during the drive, we stopped at the Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico. At least climbing through there wasn’t as hot, at least in the shade.
When we got home, I was sorting through the pictures, and decided that one I had taken of the Cliff Dwellings might make an interesting wall hanging.
I drew up an applique pattern, which took days, and then set about finding fabric to match the colors in the photo.
I knew very little about colors, shading, or much of anything. I barely knew about applique. But, I really wanted to make this wall hanging.
The problem was that I was trying to match each individual color or color change in the photo.
Some colors of fabric were easy to find, but many were impossible, and I settled for something kind of close.
Even looking back, I can’t say what the biggest problems were. But there were many, because when it was finished, I thought it was horrible. As a matter of fact, when I left my husband, that ugly quilt was one of only three he wanted. hmmm. One of the others was ugly. The third - well, I kind of liked it, but I had made it for him, so - - -
About the only good things I had to say about this wall hanging were - that I finished it (instead of throwing it away), and it was a learning experience.
It probably was the one thing that drove me to several classes where I learned about color and value; and eventually learned how to dye my own fabric.
It was the fabric dying class where I saw the problems in my fabric selection, and learned that for doing 3 - D quilts (at least back then), dying my own fabric would solve many of the problems of getting the perfect color fabric.
Sometimes Workshops Do Make a Difference
By the time I had taken five classes on color and value and three fabric dying classes, I was able to produce a 3D quilt that I am pretty happy with.
It took some inspiration from a book about making these floating boxes that look like they have holes in them, but I ended up designing a quilt that is a kind of space quilt.
This quilt had some issues as well. But, that’s a story for another time.
The point is that when you use hand dyed fabric, you can get all of the color shades (or tints, or whatever they call them) so that the colors of the fabric are perfectly matched.
And, the color and placement of your fabrics are one of the critical elements in creating a quilt or wall hanging that looks 3 dimensional.
Another critical element are the angles in your design. Although these are simple boxes, instead of being squares, they are hexagons that have been divided into angular units with dark, medium and light fabric that gives the boxes shading.
Not everyone should suffer like I did through the frustration of months of looking for fabric when I didn’t know what I was looking for.
And, while with better fabric I could have created a more 3 dimensional design from the Gila Cliff Dwelling picture, it was relatively easy, because I was copying a photo depicting a 3 dimensional scene. What if - like the boxes - you are “making it up,” and not copying a photograph?
To Spare You the Pain and Suffering, Here are a Few Tips for Making 3D Quilts
Not that I am an expert on 3 dimensional quilt designs, but I have spent some time and wasted some time and fabric experimenting, and I have taken classes and own a collection of books. So, I thought I’d share some tips and techniques I have picked up along my journey.
These are things that can turn a simple, yet flat, quilt into an interesting and dynamic 3 dimensional design:
- Choose a point off of your quilt or design as a light source. For example, in the space Quilt, the light appears to be coming from above the quilt and a little to the left. You can tell because the light parts of each box are on the top, and the medium parts are toward the bottom and right side of each box. The dark fabric is on the left inside of the boxes - which is where the least amount of light comes in (thus creating “shade”)
- Instead of looking at the actual color of fabric, choose your fabric based on its value. Each box has a light, medium and dark fabric. And even though the boxes are many different colors, the 3D illusion is maintained because of the consistent placement of the light, medium and dark fabric.
- Once you have created your light source, also create a vanishing point. This creates the angular pieces in your blocks (in the boxes, above). The box could have been made to look 3 dimensional even without “cutting the holes in the sides.” For example, the Tumbling Blocks (or Baby Blocks) quilt design uses 3 diamonds to create a hexagon. By placing the light, medium and dark fabric on the same sides in each hexagon, you create a 3 dimensional effect of solid boxes or steps.
- When you choose your fabric, choose light, medium and darks that are in the same color family to put next to each other. (My fabric dying class helped a lot with this.) If you are using a blue-green fabric and you have the dark and medium fabrics, using a yellow-green for the light fabric might not work. It may be the right value, but it might stick out like a sore thumb. Instead, find a blue-green fabric that is light. But, check it out - it may be perfect.
- Fabric selection can be much easier now because you can purchase hand dyed fabric. If you know the colors you want to use, invest in a package of hand dyed fabric that includes the range of colors in one color family. For example, get a package of green that includes fabric from dark to light. You will have choices of which fabric to use in each position, and generally won’t need to worry about whether it is a blue-green or a yellow-green. (Usually the blue-greens will be in a package and the yellow-greens will be in a different package.)
You see, creating a 3 dimensional quilt is really kind of easy. There are a few things to keep in mind, but after that, it’s a piece of cake!
