This is a quilt I made a couple of years ago, and which I use as a drape between the hall and the combined dining room and kitchen. (Click on the photo to see a larger version). The design is a wild interpretation of a quilt from a book by Kaffe Fassett, and the colours are meant to match the ochre and blue of our kitchen. The technique is blocks made of 3-5 cm wide shreds, sewn around a small square in the centre. Then the slightly uneven blocks were cut after a square paper pattern, and some of them cut diagonally in halves. The quilt was composed with a greyblue/beige striped fabric between the blocks, and small violet squares in the corners. Around it all is a darker blue and violet border. The other side is in bright blue with golden stars.
Beyond Good and Atonal
The reasonable truth. Anything but opinions.
The idea was that it is only possible to admire perfect people, not really to like them. Logically, that says nothing about what kind of reaction you can expect from others if you are NOT perfect!
The climate theory about use of colours in art and crafts is not familiar to me. What climate do they have in Tibet? Warm as their colours?
Swedish folk art is maybe a bit limited in the colours that have been available or preferred in different regions, and screaming bright shades are not common in the old works, as we see them today. In some cases this is due to change and dulling with age.
But I think typical traditional Swedish colours are those I decided to use in this house: grey, many shades of blue, and the earth/terracotta colours like red and yellow ochre.
Modern Swedish design — after ca 1920 — has often been less daring. Much greyish blue, and tasteful beige, and white of all shades.
New interior design, as you find in homes, magazines and shops here is not to my taste. It is
too much plain white walls, with blond wood, and small dots of pastels, or with bright accents.
I am not sure that I agree about the colors being too "dissonant" in this case. Certainly, the colors are not symmetrically arranged, but symmetry is not always the ultimate goal of design, and certainly is not required to make an artistic statement. The stereotypical view of the color palette of northern climes is that it is rather limited; if that is true of Sweden, then this is not a typically Swedish creation. However, I am just as suspicious of that stereotype as I am of most others. As for perfection, I quite agree. In view of my vast imperfections, then, I should be gathering the adulation of the world, should I not?
Thanks. It looks better from the distance, like in this small blog picture (click on it to see more details in a larger version), since the colours in reality are a bit too dissonant in the composition to get the idea of the whole design right when viewing it in the room where the quilt is hanging. But I like it, even if I am not satisfied with all details of the design. I think quilts and patchwork things are stimulating as meditation objects — especially if they are not perfect! Same as with music — the smooth and perfect fails to interest me, often. Maybe this is how I view people, too? Perfect people are scary, and boring. Nothing to wonder about, or wish they would improve. Nothing to forgive. Nothing to like, honestly, just "admire" — but what is that sentiment worth? Quite useless, as creative and personal impulse, if there is nothing more in it than the idea of the perfect something.
Lovely. My mother was a quilter in her younger days. I am fortunate in being the only one of her four children who has a completely handsewn quilt that she made specifically for me. The pattern, amusingly enough, is called "Young Man's Fancy."