There are a couple of things I should mention about this shot. First, our cat Mies jumped up in the midst of shooting this quilt, clearly in protest of us using Cory, that beautiful standard Poodle in Quilts Made Modern. “Fair time for felines!” he would have shouted if he could. So even though it was not his sweetest expression, in the name of fairness, we let him stay. In real life, he is a very social and friendly cat. When we bought our daughter home from China when she was 10 months old, she screamed and cried because she had never seen a cat. Unfazed, he sniffed her and stood still in the following days so she could pet him and get to know him. He’s spent many a night sleeping at her feet when she had a hard time getting to sleep. He’s now 14, fighting thyroid disease, but he’s a very special member of the family.

The other thing I’ll mention are the wonderful bolsters behind Mies. We got the foam inserts at Ikea a number of years ago. Then we did our swirled quilting pattern on them. Bill, King of Zippers and Piping, finished two of them so our daughter could use this daybed as a sofa in her room when friends are over. It’s a great solution to having bolster covers that can go in the wash, which is essential for us as a family with dust allergies.

Onto the quilt. We wanted to show that the transparency idea could be done with larger scale fabrics. As the patterns are anything but subtle, you’ll need to make the value jumps less subtle as well. Also, adding in some smaller-scale, low-contrast prints will also make the transparency more convincing.

For this pattern all you really need to focus on are the three value groups. Some people get thrown trying to decide if a dark motif on a light background is light or dark. Make your life easier and avoid those types of high-contrast prints. If you have a darker motif on a medium background, you’ll want to try it in the medium and dark groups and look at it from 10 feet away. Look at everything from a distance before you sew, because these color relationships are relative and sometimes tricky. From a distance, the relationships will be easier to see.