Latest finish

Not quilted yet, but the top is finished.  Again this was a lengthy process, and a lot of work--most of which was done improvisation-ally, using techniques described by maria Shell, in her book "Improv Patchwork".  In this case, more than half of the cutting was done with a ruler, and the improvisation came in more with accepting how the pieces went together, and accommodating for imperfections in the piecing.  All of the pieces used, with one exception, were made specifically for this piece.  I had no idea where I was going, and made decisions on the fly.  These usually resulted in a frenzy of cutting and piecing a new section to be added. 

The exception was the chevron section in the middle of the piece.  Here we are fairly early in the process.  I had the Chevron in my box of spare pieces--a very useful place for finding treasures like this. If I was more of a traditional quilter this box might be referred to as my "orphan block" box.

Here is the finished top.  I will have to add a narrow border all the way around to facilitate the long arm quilting.  

Again, a piece with no yet identified use.  Some of you may remember the last piece I made that was similar to this one.  Today my sister-in-law saw it, loved it and was allowed to take it home with her.  I'm so glad it has ended up somewhere where it is wanted and maybe loved a bit.

I plan to link this thiw Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Changes

I've been browsing the internet, and find that many serious fibre artists blog about their past year, and what they've accomplished.  I wonder about the quilters who keep careful records of how many quilts they started, how many they finished, how many yards of fabric came into the house and how many are there at the end of the year, etc.  That sort of thing would take the fun out of fibre, for me.

Given the number of years I've focused on fibre, I tend to think I've seen it all-there is nothing new under the sun. Reflecting on the outgoing year, my unexpected trip into Modern and Improv work has taught me I'm wrong.  There is a whole new world in front of me.  How exciting!  What a lot to look forward to!

So, rather than talking about it, I think I'm going to re-visit my recent quilts, and include a picture.  This is first one I made this summer.  It was an exercise in creating shapes that appear to float on a background.   I've been agonizing about how to machine quilt it.  I had an idea of what motifs I wanted to use, but the vision, of how that would play out, escaped me.  It is sandwiched, ready to go, but sits folded up on a shelf until I sort things out.  Quite recently, I had the germ of an idea, and think the problem may be solved.  The next step is to do sample, and then tackle the big quilt.  It isn't that big, but is bigger than I usually  manage to deal with on my current machine.

Next came this beauty.  I certainly want to explore this technique a little more, but feel that I need to do a little more research on it, to get it more firmly established in my mind. This did not turn out as I thought it might, and I need to figure how how to create my vision better.

This was next.  I'm thrilled with it, but not really comfortable with the variety of colour within it.  As well, the red is appearing to be my "go to" colour.  I've even laughed bit over the years, that I work as though red was a neutral.  Maybe too comfortable a niche?

So I next made a real effort to not work with the red end of the spectrum.  I like this and think I know how to quilt it.  But--am I getting too comfortable with white as my background?

White has been used again with this challenge piece I recently finished.  This was an exercise in improv piecing, in response to a challenge from the LQG.  We were given 3 fat quarters with the instruction to make "something", flat, where the three fabrics provided were obvious on the front of the piece. But we could add up to 5 additional fabrics.  I added white.  The beads are hand made, and embellished.  All the finished challenge pieces are to be auctioned off at a big quilt show next April, for charity.

There is another piece in the works, but I'm not ready to show it yet.  I very much enjoy the process of taking many solid colour fabrics and combining them into a joyous riot of piecing.  But--and a big "but"--is the difficulty I had in addressing my need to control for colour.  I cannot work on a piece if the colour doesn't please me, or make sense within my knowledge of colour theory.  The techniques involved in this process scream out for a huge variety of plain coloured fabrics.  So-o-o, I need to explore the limits of my comfort level in all of this  given the restraints I'm placing on myself.  

Chasing creativity

In my last post, I mentioned that not much had been going on in the studio.  I've been fooling around with some strips, trying to create another completely pieced, improv quilt. But the creativity just isn't there.  I think I've been a bit down the last couple of weeks, and maybe haven't realized just how far down I am.  So I had decided last night to get up and down into the studio, bright and early this morning.  Haven't made it yet, and it's not looking good.

One of the things behind my feeling a little sorry for myself is the increasingly obvious deterioration in my ability to use a rotary cutter or even scissors.  Damned arthritis!!  My husband has been trying to learn to do the cutting for me, but getting his hands to understand the nebulous ideas in my mind is a bit of a stumbling block.  We're determined to beat this problem, as he enjoys being somewhat on his own, to watch what he wants to watch, while I slave away at the sewing machine.  It's really in his best interest to sort this out.

But now Christmas has caught up with us.  For the last 3-4 years he has wanted mincemeat tarts.  We've tried several purchased ones, even going to out of the way, small bakeries in the search. Yesterday was the final straw.  We bought him two lovely looking tarts, in a very popular bakery, on the other side of the city.  They turned out to be awful.  So today, we are going shopping for supplies so that we can make them-the right way- at home.  

So, what does this mean for studio work?  Well, probably not today.

Catching up.

It's been awhile, but those two weeks have been busy.  My presentation to the LQG was last Thursday evening.  One of the ladies on the Guild executive has been working with me, for the last 3 weeks , setting up my pictures as a PowerPoint presentation.  this was sort of neat, as I learned how to use the PowerPoint on my new computer ( and my old one as it turned out).  I would run through the slides on the computer, as I rehearsed the script.  I sure didn't want to mess up.  

Well, as it turned out, once we got there, they didn't have the proper connectors to use with her computer and the equipment at the hall.  A few minutes of panic, but we decided that we would have ladies to walk the actual pieces around the audience, giving the them a chance to see the embellishments closely, as that was the purpose of the whole presentation.    This meant that parts of the script were useless, ad lib became a necessity. But once disaster was averted, I was able to relax and just go for it.  the presentation was well received and there was lots of interest in the various techniques that had been used.  As a bonus, while I was packing up, I was approached with an offer to buy one of the pieces!  Of course, the offer was accepted and the deal done right there.  I've known the purchaser for years, and believe that she had a genuine interest in the piece.  It went to a good home.  And now I have a reason to use that technique again.  Otherwise not much has been done in the studio.

Life

The old saying "Life is what happens while you are making plans", comes to mind these days.  Various stressors in my life right now, but my computer issues appear to have been resolved.  I'm still missing some of the sites that I had bookmarked on the internet, but that will come with time.  I have the special ones.  My studio has always been my savior when I find myself under stress, but at the same time, my creativity diminishes.  But this time, I'm finding myself putting things together, using the "Mod meets Improv" techniques I learned over the summer.  Not great art, but original work.  None of the pieces is large enough for use on a bed, but that isn't stopping me.  Since these pieces are larger than my usual wall hangings, the issue of quilting has come up.  Do I want to try to quilt them myself, or give up some control to a long-armer?  I was very pleased with the result last time, but the urge to do it myself is always there.  Since I have no long term use for them, I think I'm going to try it with one, and just see how it works out. Nothing ventured, right? But, I have a hunch there is a long-armer in my future

At the same time, I continue to work on the presentation I'm doing for the LQG.  Two of my Fibre Diva friends have loaned me pieces  for the show, and the Power point part of it is now out of my hands.  Now I just have to rehearse my speech, and get it firmly in my mind, while making sure it will only take the 20 minutes I've been allowed.

A tiny bit of heaven

My computer issues remain unresolved, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  The temperamental computer I bought is going back and a new one--an upgrade is on its way.  I should have it by the end of the week.  It means the hassle of setting it up again, but I've been promised professional help with that, so am able to relax a bit.

In the meantime, I got to do some studio work today.  Some of you may know that between art-y projects I have been slowly working on Jen Kingwell's "Long Time Gone" pattern.  This is somewhat of a stress reduction strategy, as it involves very precise piecing of tiny pieces.  The precision needed leaves no room in your brain for thinking about anything but what you are doing. Yesterday and today, I finished 21 churn dash blocks each 3"square, finished.  They had been cut some time ago, and had been hanging around my design wall making a nuisance of themselves.  But now they're done.  Then I decided to start some more imrov piecing.  Since my elderly wrists won't tolerate more than a minimum amount of rotary cutting, I taught  my husband to do the basic cutting.  He has done a lot of my cutting, for years.  He says that this improv stuff is the easiest he's ever done.

So, a few hours of peace and contentment, in a world that has been anything but recently

Not much action lately

There have been two major projects on my mind, and neither of them involve studio work.  One is a major organizational project for a group I volunteer with, and the other is a presentation on "Embellishment", complete with photos and a screen presentation, as it will be a fairly large audience.

Add to this a major computer fail, and the acceptance of the need for a new one.  We've all heard of lists of the most stressful events in one's life--divorce, death, moving etc, but I don't remember reading about computer fails in any of those lists. Buying a new laptop was simple, but add to that data transfers, and then the need to set up the new one--I've done nothing much else for the last three days.

However, my DH and I did take a few minutes for some R&R, and ended up at a small casino out of town.  A nice buffet lunch, a few minutes at the penny slots, and off home with more than we started with.  My habit when something like that happens is to take a little of the money, and spend it foolishly.  This is one thing that lottery winners are told to do.  Well, I spent more than I should have, and here is the result.  Does this look like $130.00 worth of Beads?  they are all metallic, and all but two of the tubes are manufactured by Miyuki. The bobbins of bead thread contain my favourite go-to thread--not cheap. So I understand the cost, but still feel a little guilty.  As my husband says "you have enough beads at home for a store, why do you need these?"  Don't care.  He can spend the rest on furnace filters, but these are mine!

Just about there!

All of the collage work is finished on my two 12 by 12's.  Next comes beading.  For these pieces the beading will be minimal, rather than the encrusted beading I love.  The circles are created by painting the glue side of fusible webbing, that is attached to paper.  When dry, it's supposed can be just fused on, but I found it wasn't that easy.  I had to remove the paper and make sure that the paint side was closest to the iron.  I also wanted to warm up the pieces a bit.  So I used a copper metallic thread to attach the circle--admittedly more decorative than functional. Then I put the copper metallic in two other places on the piece.

My next step is to figure out how to attach the pieces to the wrapped canvas.  I have always wrapped the piece around, and stapled it down, but this is rather bulky because it's backed with industrial felt.  So, my options are to cut it exactly to 12 by 12 and finish the edge--always a difficult chore, for me. Then glue it to the canvas, after adding a layer of paint to the canvas.  This would mean not having to finish the back to hide the stapled edges.  But I'm really not confident of my skill in doing it this way.  A third option would be to remove the canvas before wrapping the edges of the piece around--which is the direction I think I might go.

I plan to link this to The Needle and Thread Network, and maybe to Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Fridays.

Still trying to figure it out

After doing a lot of thinking, I suddenly realized that in trying to plan hand embroidery, I'm trying to work with old skills--things I can no longer do.  Why not go with my current skills?  Than means getting down to machine work.  So, instead of giving up on the 12 by 12's, I've put together two backgrounds for collage and machine embellishment.

During my recent "purge" several things that could potentially be used in this were thrown out.  Most of what is left works well in a white/gold colour scheme.  I've used some cotton hand dyes, but also several scraps from silk kimonos.  The pictures aren't good, but the pieces all work together, and I look forward to starting the machine embellishment tomorrow.

Frustration

We've experienced a severe snow storm the last couple of days, and since any sort of travel is discouraged, that means lots of studio time.  I decided to start work on some 12 by 12 pieces I wanted for my gallery show in May.  I had no firm idea of what I was going to do, but figured that the smaller area required hand stitching as opposed to pieced work or FMQ'g.  Borrowing a technique described in a recent Art Quilt Studio magazine, I used Inktense blocks to make marks on several small pieces of damp cotton, and then diffused those marks with more water and elbow grease.  I was thrilled with the result, but the backs of the pieces were often more appealing.  I still didn't have a clear idea of what I might be doing, but decided to try using several pieces of fused glass that had been gifted as focal points. One piece had an amazing orange-y pink/brown colour that I just loved. I doesn't photograph well so you'll just have to take my word for it.

I did a bit of rubber stamping, as suggested in the magazine article.  Maybe not a good idea.  Then I selected thread and such for the embellishment. After quilting it,  I found I wanted to accent the stitched area a bit more, so needle felted a wisp of roving into it, the colour of which just about matched the darker lines of the InkTense blocks.  Glued on the glass, and stitched it down with invisible thread.  Started stitching, and worked on it, slowly, for about an hour.

I'm not thrilled.  As I said the colour is not true.  The background is an orange-y/pink with vague brown streaks.

This has sent me into a "blue funk".  My creative skills appear to have diminished significantly over the past couple of years.  I haven't produced anything that really "stirs my blood", in all that time.  I wonder if this is a part of aging, or maybe the first echoes of diminishing brain function?  Maybe a function of poor preparation?  Regardless, I am frustrated.  Creating an image and puzzling out how to a achieve it, used to come easily to me.  Have I boggled my mind with too many new and different techniques?  My two most significant mentors were aunts who remained creative well into their 80's and 90's.  Does this mean that I'm aging that much more quickly than them? This is certainly the longest period of creative block I've ever experienced.

Many years ago, I started a "prompt" jar, by writing down bits of ideas on paper, as they occurred, and putting them in a jar for use when I didn't know how to proceed with a troublesome design.  I also have a couple of pages in my sketch book containing similar notes.  Maybe it's time.  And maybe it's time to abandon my plans for the 12 by 12's, and find something else for my show.

Re-visiting Shibori

Today was the monthly meeting of my fibre art support group, who call themselves The Fibre Art Divas.  Under that name they are recognized a a group to watch.  They currently have one travelling exhibition, Prairie Perspectives, and a second one, Home Is..., currently being organized.  Our meetings are a lively exchange of ideas, as well as a genuine critique session that the members trust.

Today the question came up about how we use the fabrics we create with Shibori, or Eco-dying and printing, or anything else where we make significant changes in the appearance of the surface of the fabric.

In response to that discussion I would like to discuss a couple of the pieces I have created with my Shibori dyed fabrics.  I had a wonderful "how-to" book that I used as a resource in all by Shibori dyeing, but can't find it, nor do I remember the title and author.  Also missing is the correct terminology for some of the techniques I used.  My apologies.

My first effort consisted of overdyeing some previously dyed fabrics using a basic Shibori clamping technique.  I then added leaf prints to some areas for focal interest.There is one piece of pole wrapped Shibori, but at the time, I really wasn't sure how to use it in a piece.

The next piece was made using nothing but hand-stitched Shibori pieces.  I had far more than I could use, so chose pieces based on a colour scheme.  This piece has a great deal of hand quilting to complement the stitch, based dyed areas.

The third piece was made with pieces selected from my "stash" purely on the basis of colour.  It includes some stitched, some pole wrapped and some folded and clamped sections.  It is completely machine quilted.

Lastly, I put together a lot scraps from the previous efforts, using a colour scheme again.  Do you sense that I have an affinity for a blue red or blue green analogous colour scheme?  This piece was quite "blah" until I added the purple circles.  This addition completed the analogous colour scheme and totally changed the finished effect.  It is machine pieced, machine quilted and the circles are fused applique.

Now I'm worried that this whole trip down memory lane may result in more Shibori work.  Whoops!

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network, as well as Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday

Something entirely different

Having worked every day for the last 6-8 weeks on the intricately pieced  top I posted about last time, I wanted something quite different to work on, and also wanted something where I could do some hand stitching, while I watched tv.  The hand stitching didn't work out too well, but I did get something entirely different. I started trying to figure out how to use the eco-printed leaves I  did some time ago.  This is fairly small about 22" by 22", or slightly less.  It fought me all the way when I was trying to hand stitch the sections or trying out various other coloured threads for the machine stitching.  It quite insisted on black, and fought for the buttonhole stitch.  I didn't sandwich and quilt this but simply backed it with black felt.  I didn't think it needed any thing more than what you see here.

Full view 

 and two closeups of the eco-prints

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread network

Finished!

The latest piece is finished--not yet quilted as I would need to have someone do that for me, but my part is done.  I have been working on this for about 6 weeks.  Every day 4-6 hours in the studio.  Lots of ripping out, but also lots of piecing.  After getting this far, I carefully pinned it to my design wall and measured it from opposite corners to opposite corners to see how badly off square it was.  Wow!  Square within 1/4".  After all of the work, and brain work, when I did the measuring for determining if it was square, and found it so close, I actually wept for a  moment or two.  I know that this is very much out of my comfort zone, and the whole thing has been a significant challenge to me.

It has finished at about 51" by 60", or will be that size when I stitch a narrow dark grey border on.  I think that this will make quilting much easier from a technical viewpoint.  Now I have quite a few scrap pieces of pieced bits sewn together, and then trimmed off various sections.  I plan to spend tomorrow taking those apart so they can be re-used.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie Sayre's  Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Wow!

The last couple of weeks have been frantic both in the studio and on the home front.  Home front issues have been resolved for the most part, but since stitching is one of the ways I relax, there has been a lot of activity on that front, as well.  I continue to work my way through the Maria Shell book Improv Patchwork.  I've created samples of most of the techniques discussed, and am now putting together an actual piece using those techniques.  Obviously, my design is heavily inspired by her work, especially this first piece.  I'm sure there will be more of myself in any further pieces I may produce.  Here's my progress so far.  This picture was where I was last week.  I had figured out the design, but was having trouble getting any concept of the actual size of the various techniques, once they're assembled.  The center section is put together, and the triangles added against one side gave me an idea of what the actual measurements of the final piece would be--about 30 inches wide by 60 inches long.  Not a good size for anything, so I needed to add more width,  aiming at about 45 inches.

This meant adding another technique between the center section and the triangles.  I decided to make what Maria Shell calls "Polka Dots".  I chose red as my dominant colour and considered light green, yellow and touches of black for the "dots".  The idea is to have the dots almost appear to float against the background. This required putting together sections of strips,  I made three, all different. Then cutting them apart crosswise.

These narrow strips are then joined together, end for end, to create 60 inch strips.  I needed six 60 inch strips.

The next step is to join each narrow strip to a strip of red, and then join them all together, with a wider red strip on each side.

Here is the piece as it stands now.  The center section is not yet stitched to the red, and the triangles will have to be assembled as a separate section and then added. The bottom edge is yet to be determined.  But that is another day

 I'm constantly amazed at how different this is from my usual work.  I've been having a lot of self doubt about my art lately, but I'm finding so much challenge and excitement in making this piece, that I feel a real confirmation of my recent decision to make what I want, and not worry about my future as an artiste.

Well--I promised pictures

What is going on now is much more a re-organization than a purge.  With the purging we've done over the past few months, this was almost a "sit down and take stock" activity.

This corner of my storeroom used to house a corner shelf made up of 4 small plastic triangular tables that we used to use at the lake for holding drinks etc when we were sitting outside.  They link together vertically to make a four tiered corner shelf.  But it was out of the way and didn't get used much at all.  I think I used to store balls of crochet cotton and a tub of plastic drinking straws on it.  ( the straws were used to make beads.)  Now I have all of those rolls of batting or fabric, and the pool noodles I use to roll my quilts on, in that space.  These used to be against a wall and were always falling over and creating a safety hazard.My spare ironing board and the plexiglas portable table for my sewing machine fit quite nicely in there as well.

The corner shelf itself has moved into  the main area of the studio, where it replaced a tv table with an Ott light on it, neither of which have been used in years.  It had been set up to provide light for my sewing machine from the rear.  I think the corner shelf  will be much more useful here, and I've already started storing my Teflon ironing sheets there.

I still have lots of empty shelves in the storeroom.

This little shelving unit used to have both the upper shelves covered in spools of thread.  I found a hanging basket for most of the thread.  This poor neglected rabbit is one I made years ago.  He was a very complicated project, utilizing quite a few different furry fabrics, to get exactly the type of fur rabbits should have.  He had been relegated to a dark corner of the room, quite unseen, unless one knew where to look.

I have five different rolling sets of drawers on wheels.  With the recent purge there were many empty drawers in most of them.  I managed to amalgamate three of them and ended up with two totally empty units.

   
And finally, I spent part of the afternoon sorting through my cd's.  Here are the discards, and the small table, seen above, is now gone.

With moving the rolls of batting etc, into the corner of the storeroom, and removing one rolling cabinet from the area, I had room against the wall to store my two boxes of rolled drawing paper, tracing paper, and freezer paper, etc.  This has created so much more room.  The antique wardrobe seen here is also now empty of everything except one rolled quilt.  Except we can't agree on what to do with it now.

The other thing we did today was bring in an electrician in to replace one of the Fluorescent light fixtures above my work table.  It had been broken when we had tried to replace a bulb.  I had thought that all of the Fluorescent bulbs were full spectrum bulbs, but as soon as he turned the new light on, we realized that they weren't.  He also replaced the light bulb  in one of the incandescent fixtures in the non-studio end of the basement.  Oh My! What a difference.  He is going to come back to add a third incandescent fixture in that area, as, up until now, the area has been too dark to do anything in.
I'm thinking I might bring in another sturdy table and make that area my cutting area.  We are also seriously thinking of moving the two heavy duty storage shelving units presently in the studio area, into the other end of the basement, so as to give me more working area around my sewing machine and iron. 

So lots of changes being considered around here.  

When I'm upset, I clean

I think part of it is that I only see the dirt when my head is too messed up to think about my art.  So--I had thought the great purge was finished.  I got rid of so mush stuff that I had thought I would never need to use a garbage pail again (My studio contains 3 five gallon pails and I can hit one from just about any spot in the area.  Often I miss, but that's poor aim)  But I digress!  Now that so much stuff is gone, I find that my brain is looking at a general streamlining of the facility and a simplification of work habits.   Doesn't that sound ambitious?  I have a hunch that DH is encouraging me quietly, but I'll let him think he's getting away with it, as the job is going smoothly, and I'm actually seeing improvement.  Obviously picture are in order, and I plan to do that during my "down time" this afternoon.  It's likely that the work will go on all week.

What to do, what to do.......

Still obsessing over what to do with the 4 1/2 WOF pieces of fabric that were used in my attempt at Eco-printing.  It's been suggested that I over dye the fabric.  I admit that I had thought of that and rejected the idea, as the colour that I now have, although spotty is luscious--IMHO.  Probably not in any one else's opinion, but then I'm the artist so my opinion is paramount.  ( snort)  Well, I've been wrong before.  The best compromise I can come up with might be to dye one or two of the pieces, just to see what happens, but save the rest for using in some sort of collage with the decent print that I have.  This may be coming more from an inability to figure out how to use the decent print than from any real design concepts.  But that is an issue for tomorrow.  The excellent home made wine, I've been drinking this evening, tells me that maybe my best thought, right now, is to go to bed.

Been awhile

But I'm just coming off eight days of computer problems with no internet access.  OMG!  How do we let ourselves get so reliant on these devices?

I'm still valiantly plodding along putting together pieces, for one single large piece to be quilted, using what I've learned in my self study  of improv piecing, over the summer.  But with fall fast approaching I felt that I needed to get a bit of Eco-printing done for an exhibition piece I plan to make over the winter in preparation for a gallery show next May.  My results were not good.  I had tried this technique twice before and got a few good prints using heavy water colour paper.  This time I used Prepared for Dying ( PFD) fabric, as instructed on the internet.  The first time I did three bundles, but tied them a little too tightly.  I checked one after boiling them the  proscribed two hours and it was very, very pale, so I left the other two bundles in for another three hours. These two were very dark, but with no recognizable leaf prints.  

So today, I did two more bundles, in a new bath.  One was slightly more loosely tied, and the other a lot more loosely tied.  The results weren't good with those either.  Out of the five bundles, I got one good usable print.  But the coloured fabric that came from the other bundles, may still be usable in creating a finished piece.  Here is the print I got and really like.

I guess I must have done something right, at some point.

back a step

Because I was determined to use what Maria Shell calls "tracks", in my new piece.  I thought it would be wise to make a trial according to  her directions, before starting out on sections of my planned piece.  So I cut what sounded like fairly large pieces of fabric and did the required stitching, and ended up with this.  I have yet to add long yellow strips along each edge, but this is huge!

This picture puts it in scale with my full design was with the ironing board in front for scale.  There is no way I could ever cope with a piece large enough to include this section.

So, now I need to step back and calculate, and then run a trial of the size of piece I think I will need.  I'll probably need to buy more fabric as well.

Ready to move on

I've spent a lot of time preparing samples and manipulating colour.  Now it's time to actually attempt to make a piece out of all of this.  Here are the colours I've selected for my piece.  I've used ruby glasses to check out value, and think there is enough to work with.  Looking at the picture I wonder what happened while I spent 4 hours cutting.  The light blue appears to have been rejected.  Or maybe the colour is just wrong in the picture and it's the teal that I did end up working with.

Next is a grid I made with two of the colours.  What appears black is a dark grey.  It appears more like itself in the picture above.

After putting the grid together, I cut as much of my planned cutting as I could before my wrist gave out.  Probably won't get to stitching that until, at least, Wednesday, and likely won't finish the stitching until the end of next month.