Quilters Color Weekend

That's the official name of the retreat.  People who are on Twitter can put a hashtag in front of that and follow the "goings on" of the weekend.  Yesterday the idea behind our work here got a bit clearer.

The air cleared a bit so I got a better photo of Islesboro from the deck~

That's the dining room from the deck~

Here is the room where we are working~

This is my work space~

My area includes the floor where I laid out my collage.  My assignment before I came was to pull together images from magazines and elsewhere that appeal to me, to not give a lot of thought to why I like what I selected and to not try to make the pictures fit together.  That was our work yesterday, to lay out our pictures in a way that makes sense to us.  It took quite a while, and this is what my original collage looked like~

I was surprised at how the colors flowed from one into another, when color is not what I focused on when I selected the pictures.  It turns out that was the point of the exercise, not to think about it but to go with what naturally appeals to us.  I was even more surprised when I learned I could separate my original collage into three separate collages where the colors looked like they were destined to go together~

Then I matched squares from paint chips to each collage.  This collage process is what Amy Butler, our leader yesterday, uses to design fabric.  Her work is more intricate than what we accomplished in one day, but the basic steps are the same.  She repeatedly asked us to trust the process and follow the steps, and by the time I saw the potential for three collages she had me convinced.  Then I pulled out the fabric that I brought from home just because I like it, even though it's not the colors or the pattern I would normally select.  I honestly thought maybe I could finally do something with it this weekend~

Here's my primary collage - the one that came first in the organization of images~

Uncanny.  Then I looked at the edge of the material and realized it was designed by Amy Butler.  Quite the trip, this journey through color....