The 7 principles of art and design are balance, rhythm, pattern, emphasis, contrast, unity and movement. Use the elements of art and design – line, shape/form, space, value, color and texture – to create a composition as a whole.

I was recently reading about and seeing blog posts about Quiltcon 2020 acceptances and rejections.  If you look for #quiltconreject on instagram, you’ll see many beautiful and original quilts.  I wondered how many quilts are submitted, and how many jurors there are.  How do they pick the “chosen” and reject the unchosen?  Thats when I started thinking about the seven principle of design.  Of course I couldn’t remember all seven, as I learned them back in the 80’s.  A quick google search brought up the quote above.   Its seems like a lot to coordinate into making one thing.  Some makers are adept and some aren’t. But what about the ones on the edge, like if they did one thing a little bit better, they were a little bit clearer with their composition?  What is the tipping point, where everything falls into place, and you “feel it” “get it” or even like it.  There are artists/makers who intrinsically know, and can judge all the parts/pieces/whole in a few seconds.  Do they have some kind of mental checklist?  Is it a right brained or left brained thing?  In becoming a master artist, does this list get longer or shorter, or just read faster?

This post is sort of a continuation of my  Ruminations  post about a month ago.  I would like to make another show quilt this coming year.  Maybe even for QuiltCon 2021.  Self doubt is part of what holds back those goals.  In an age of self advertisement and promotion how does one stand out?  In the days before Facebook and even before the internet, people had to self promote themselves on merit, and talent, maybe a little luck or knowing the right person.  So how does one break through the fuzzy static of a world filled with selfies, twitter and visual noise?  Seems like one of those secrets that won’t be shared, because then everyone will be doing it.  Hey! Look over here! My quilt is freakin’ Awesome!  I’m more like “excuse me, did you happen to notice this thing over here that I, uh, made?”