More on "Hat on a Blue Chair" 08-18-09

I had some interesting and useful responses to yesterday's post about Hat on a Blue Chair, so I am going to use today's post to share them. Some were sent as comments and some as direct e-mails. Since sometimes people don't comment because they don't want their name on the blog, I will not ID anyone. The responses are below. Further comments are welcome - this is a chance for me to learn how others view things. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#1 Well, it's just my opinion but the aqua chair "out shines" the beautiful green hat because it's so intense! Similar value but grabs the attention. Maybe it's because I am not a fan of aqua....Love the hat, love the chair but not the color of the chair....well, you asked for comments, so that's mine...
----------------------------------------------------------------#2 Maybe some shadow so that the hat looks as though it is actually sitting on the chair instead of floating there?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#3 I was looking at your chair and hat quilt. I don't think it looks like it is floating at all. My impression is that the hat is fancy...I love the hat!!... That the chair is so plain..perhaps that is the culprit? Does the chair need to be fancier? I don't know...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#4 I really like the hat on the chair. It reminds me of a hat my mother wore. It was woven straw with orange, pink, and red flowers. She wore hats well. How large is the quilt?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#5 I was intrigued by your quilt that you don't feel "works". I thought it might be a fun challenge to open it in PhotoShop and play with it in answer to your "how would you improve it?" question. Attached are two possibilities, though these changes could not be made to the quilt at this point. So it is just for fun.What a travesty to mess with someone else's work--I feel a little guilty! But it was a fun

1. I thought the colors used for the background, chair and hat were too close in value and could be livened up, so I changed those colors, giving them more contrast. I also thought the composition would be stronger if the sides, with background color were cropped off.

2. After making the first changes, I thought the flowers you used were so starkly different in mood and tone that they didn't work very well with the simple, flat background, so I would have found a fabric with flatter, more stylized flowers to add to the hat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Del says... Of course, one of the limitations in making this type of quilt is that one is limited by the requirement to use only the fabrics from a certain manufacturer. I often find that sample quilts made to show the possibilities of a fabric line don't work very well. I don't remember what other fabrics were available in the 2004 line. I know that the large pink/red flowers were the only possibility for broiderie perse, so I limited myself with that first selection. I like the aqua fabric, and after making the chair I liked the white/aqua combination. However, the hat kills the chair and the chair kills the hat!! For me the "virtual" yellow/orange/red/pink flowers are MUCH more effective - those hot Mexican colors have always appealed to me and I use them frequently in my quilts. I don't care for the dark blue background, but I'm not sure what color might work better in my eyes. As I recall I had a polka dot fabric that I tried, but it distracted too much from the flowers on the hat.

I think that I will have to learn Adobe PhotoShop once I have Microsoft Publisher down pat - what fun to take a quilt that doesn't work and try to improve it as a "virtual image".