Potato Chip Challenge: Gradient Experiments

Hello Friends and Welcome!

Pretty soon, I'll be getting started on a new challenge project for one of my quilt guilds!

The project features a free scrap pattern by Brenda Logan of Conquering Mount Scrapmore called Potato Chip. The blocks are made up of scrappy rectangles with no matching seams, so it's super fast and easy to put together!

Here's what the block looks like:

Using different combinations of colour and value, there are so many ways to turn this simple block into a variety of unique quilt designs, making it a perfect challenge pattern!

I can't wait to see what the other members come up with!

One final part of the challenge is that members get to vote on their favourite challenge quilt at an upcoming meeting in the Autumn. This lets members who are unable to make a quilt participate in the challenge in their own way, and allows those who did make a quilt to show it off!

To keep that vote fair, we've been asked not to share any photos of our challenge quilts until after the vote has taken place, so I'll have to look forward to making a Potato Chip post in a few months to show that quilt to all of you!

And though I won't be sharing photos of my progress, I do want to share a little of my planning process! Let's take a look!

Inspiration

For my Potato Chip challenge quilt, I want to play with a technique I don't have much experience with; watercolour piecing!

Traditionally, I believe watercolour quilts are typically pieced using large floral prints cut into pieces and arranged to form a picture or gradient. The size of the pieces depends on the quilt maker; I've seen some made from pieces as big as 4" fitting whole printed flowers, and as small as 1" postage stamp quilts.

The only time I've looked into watercolour piecing before was in the Summer of 2021 when I made a watercolour mugrug.

Since the quilt is so tiny, I did a simple gradient from green at the bottom to white at the top, but for a larger quilt, I wonder if I can make a more complicated gradient?

Designing a Gradient

To draft my custom gradient, I'll be using two free programs.

Krita is an open source digital art program; I use it to make all the diagrams and digital images shared on my blog and in my pattern instructions. Coolors is a colour pallet generator and gradient drafting tool; I use it while planning a lot of my quilts to help select colours.

This post isn't sponsored by either company, I just find both programs to be super helpful for my method of planning and drafting quilts!

I want to try making a four colour gradient, with a different colour in each of the four corners of the quilt. I'll start by picking my colours!

These aren't the colours I'm planning for the challenge quilt, I just selected a random four colour pallet that I like!

Next, I'll use the Coolors gradient tool to fill in the colours along the four sides.

Next, I'll fill in the centre row and column.

This is my first time trying this method of gradient generation, so I'm absolutely delighted to find that the central square matched up!

Now I'll fill in those remaining areas.

Now that we have a completed four way gradient, we can overlay the linework of the Potato Chip block it to figure out how many pieces we'll need to cut from each colour!

For this sample, let's say we want our quilt to be 4x4 blocks;

Since the gradient was made on a 5x5 grid and we want a quilt with 4x4 blocks, there are several Potato Chip pieces that fall into two or more coloured areas. This is actually a good thing as it will help to smooth the transitions between the very square edges of the gradient we created!

There's two ways to decide which colour each of these transitional pieces should be; option one is to just pick one of the colours, option two is to go back to the gradient tool and use a colour that falls in the middle.

For option one, I typically chose whichever colour filled most the piece, but if an area was looking too square, I would pick the other colour.

Looking at the first block in the top row as an example, if I always chose the colour that occupied most of the piece, the beige area would be almost perfectly square, as shown on the right. By choosing the colour that takes up less space, we can make the shape of the beige area more interesting and dynamic!

For option two, we'll go back to the gradient tool, using it to find a new colour for any pieces that overlap the edges of the underlying gradient!

This creates a much smoother effect over all, especially when seen as a vector image like this. If we were to make this design in fabric, I suspect the variation in colours and prints would make such finicky touches unnecessary, but it's fun to play with the colours anyway!

Watercolour Quilting Gradient

So far, we've played with a very colourful gradient, but most of the watercolour quilts I've seen tend to start with a very dark colour, move through the colourful florals, and end with a very light colour.

To make a gradient like that, I'll start with the coloured sample we already made.

I've rotated the gradient so the two lightest colours face the white end and the darkest colours face the dark end, then I'll be following the same steps as before to fill in the gaps!

Finish the gradient by overlaying the linework of the blocks and smoothing out the colours of any pieces along the edges of the underlying gradient.

If using this method to make an actual quilt, you'll want to make the gradient to scale with the finished dimensions of the quilt. You'll notice that this sample lost some of the pieces off either side.

I've learned so much from playing around with gradients today and am excited to start drafting the colour layout I want to use for my guild's Potato Chip challenge!

If this post has inspired you to make a quilt using multi colour gradients, or to try out the Potato Chip block, I would love to see what you make! Please share photos and stories in the comments below, by sending me an email, or by tagging me on Instagram! I love hearing from other creative people and seeing what you come up with!

While I'm sad I won't be able to share any photos of this project over the next few months, I hope you'll look forward to seeing my Potato Chip quilt when it's finally finished!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA