Ellen Linder made a great comment on yesterday’s blog post about size and scale–that the size you work is also either aided or hindered by the print scale of the fabrics you use.

If you have a lot of small scale prints in your stash, working large will make all those little patterns look dinky and boring.  However, on the other hand, if you have lots of very large scale prints in your stash, working small will be very frustrating.  It is great to be able to fussy cut an area from a large scale fabric to do just what you need, but if you wanted the pattern or implied texture to show, you may miss out if you work too small.

Look at the print scale in these works:

this is a relatively large piece (for me, anyway) which means the scale of the prints is rather small.  Make particular note of the turquoise print at the edge of the vessel….

the same fabric looks like a larger scale in chairs of this smaller piece.

What about the black and white floral fabric in the center of this drum, in a closeup from a larger piece:

here it is again in the tree bark:

or the black and white fabric behind her face

and the same fabric as the sidewalk in a larger piece

and keep in mind I never work too large, imagine the scale of these prints in a piece four times the size.

Thanks for the excellent point, Ellen!

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