Design Challenge Week #4 Results

It's been a busy week but an idea or two have been percolating in my head for a few days.  Two general concepts kept coming to the fore.  While I like both concepts, I seem to have a preference for one of them.

The sketchbook has sketchy ideas laid out.

 

I'm a beginning weaver who has wanted to weave for all of her life, so I wanted to like the woven ideas more.  I started with the idea of the threads weaving back and forth. (In a quilt the "threads" would be woven rather than sitting on top of each other).  Friendships sometimes wax and wane, moving away then coming back.  Different colors would represent different friendships and, in a quilt, the threads would likely be different widths.  But I didn't like it.  I didn't like it at all.  (Perhaps I would like it more with the varied thread thicknesses, and having them woven in and out but I doubt it would help much.)

I tried it with a more traditional straight threads in a weaving idea.  I actually like this one a great deal and it might find its way, in some form, into a quilt.   But it didn't really fit what was floating around in my head.

So, back to more fluid lines.  Again, varied widths and colors, along with proper interweaving, would improve the design and make it better fit the concept.  I like it, sort of, and it, too, might make it into a quilt one day.  But not this one.  :-)

The other idea, which I didn't want to like as much as the woven concept, uses different shapes and colors to represent different types of friendships and friends.  (Yes, there are bars and circles.  I can't help it!)  Some are heavily connected for a long time, some touch our lives for a very short time.  Some loom large in our lives, others are brief and limited but still a part of who we are, and important to our lives.

At first the idea involved only rectangular shapes, as illustrated in the sketch, but my brain liked different shapes.  Because some friendships are more intense than others, some shapes would have more intense colors. 

In order to represent friendships that wane or are "dormant" for a time, but are still connected to us, I decided to add some threads of connection.   As I'm a spinner (er, Spinster) I could use some handspun yarn.   And I would probably have to add some beads for embellishment, just because.

No doubt the end quilt would look different than this, with shapes moved, resized, and recolored. I might even use fewer shapes, so it's closer to the previous image.  But I like the concept. 

How about you?  What would you add or change, to represent your friendships?