The next section of study in my design class has been designing with texture and patterns. Our project was to create a texture quilt with images of texture cut from magazines. Images of texture would be things like grass, fur, rocks, brick, rusty metal, tortoise shells, and more.  The other guideline was that the images couldn’t reveal the actual object.

I collect Patagonia catalogs because the photography is so beautiful, and I love to read their environmental and adventure essays too.  It was a great resource to find large pieces of texture.  Check out my pile.

I also bought a diving magazine for the beautiful beach photos and under-the-sea textures, which had a nice effect when laid next to snowy textures.

Gardening magazines had good texture too. Climbing magazines had good images of rocks and mountains, which looked great next to images of vegetation and sea life textures. 

We had to keep in mind the design concepts of symmetry, asymmetry, proximity, hierarchy, proportion, repetition, rhythm and unity when designing our quilt pattern.  It reminded me of all things we learn in quilting classes, so this was a fun exercise to work on.

As you can tell, I decided to make log cabin blocks using a one-inch log template with the darker colors in the center. (Would you believe I have never made a log cabin patchwork? I have a great pile of scraps from recent swaps that I want to use for scrappy log cabin blocks, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet.) I didn’t do a border because the white around the edges of my paper seemed to finish off the piece quite nicely. 

Isn’t that cool? This was such a unique way to study texture, create patterns and get a taste for working with color, which is our next and final section of design.  I really pushed myself here to trust my creative instincts and also figure out when to stop the gathering and planning process, and start designing!