Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Chartreuse is a Neutral


I may not love chartreuse as much as Gerrie does, but it is one of my favorite colors. When she stated it was her favorite neutral, I knew exactly what she meant -- it plays well with others.

I also thought about Rene Magritte's painting, "This is not a pipe." But there's a pipe. It's a painting of a pipe!


So, while chartreuse isn't actually a neutral (how wonderfully audacious to call such an intense and unique color a "neutral"), it does act like a neutral.


So here is my chartreuse (beautifully hand dyed by my local friend Joan) playing well with other colors, as a neutral should.

11 comments:

Gerrie said...

LOL, LOL!! I love it your validation of my incorrect statement. That is a gorgeous piece of hand-dyed fabric. This is going to be such a fantastic mosaic!!

Karen said...

Your piece shows how well neutral chartreuse really is, I never realized it went with everything when I started this project.

Vivien Zepf said...

I think your piece does illustrate how "neutral" chartreuse" is ... something I never really considered. But wait, are all the corners covered in hand stitches and is the "IS" filled with French Knots? Holy Smokes, woman; how cool is that?!?

Terri Stegmiller said...

Perfectly done to show how neutral this color really can be.

kirsten said...

Yes, there's a pile of validation for Gerrie! I wondered how you did the "IS" until I enlarged it - oh my goodness! That is a lot of knots! The fonts you have chosen are perfect, too.

Diane Perin said...

Oh, how fun -- and funny! (Are these pineapple scraps?!) Everything works beautifully with chartreuse, especially your amazing hand-stitching.

Terry Grant said...

That elegant script for the word "chartreuse" seems like an ironic reference to a label on a bottle of chartreuse! In nature I think chartreuse is the neutral against which all the other colors play. Despite the very linear composition, this makes me think of a garden.

Deborah Boschert said...

So fun! How did you do the stitching on the word chartreuse? Was it done on an embroidery machine and appliqued on? You've done a great job combining simple machine quilting with all the lovely hand stitching.

Kristin L said...

Vivien, Kirsty, and Deborah: I embroidered all the text by hand. The "IS" is a ton of French Knots and then I carefully machine quilted around the edges of the letters at the very end. "Chartreuse" is chain stitch.
Terry: I was thinking the same thing. It really wanted to have that fancy liqueur-like script. Nothing else looked as good. You may also appreciate that the word neutral is Helvetica -- a neutral in the typography world -- and (it JUST dawned on me) a political neutral was well since it was designed in and named after, Switzerland!!
Diane: there are a few pineapple scraps in there, but some of my usual earthy scraps too.

Sue Reno said...

Nicely done! I'm enjoying all the fabrics you chose to play along.

Françoise said...

Very nice! Everything has been said already, but I really like how you embroidered the four squares in the corners.