Friday, May 01, 2009

Super Thin Letters

It's been so much fun thinking of fonts. It makes me excited to see all of your plans for making cool words for the Halloween Noises quilt. Awesome. How about end of May for the deadline? Not to worry if you're late - I can ALWAYS find a project for really cool Halloween words.

I decided to show you some options of playing with super skinny letters. I've used them before in my quilt America with Flag. I got it out this morning to take a close up of the letters and voila, instant kitty.


I made those letters with 3/4" strips (finishing at a quarter inch). It's fiddly but comes up with a great result. The background strips were cut 3/4" and 1", except for the background of the M, which was 1.25" wide. These letters finish at 4" high. 

Sometimes it's fun to play with graph paper to work out how you'd make letters. It's quicker than piecing. I thought, what would happen if I made these super skinny letters really tall? How about 9"?
 
That looks cool, but boy it's hard to read. How about another two? First is 6" and the second is 3". Now it's easier to read what it says.

You'll notice I played a bit with the K each time, trying out different options to make things work. Those letters with slants really throw a curveball in when you're trying to make your letters this narrow. There are always ways to make them though.

With those first few I kept the letters all the same height. What about varying them?

How about making the letter fabric super skinny but making the letters themselves wider?

There are all sorts of options and they can look dramatically different.

Was it fun to see these or just not that helpful? If you'd like me to play around with some other types of fonts, just give a holler. But even better, try it yourself first.

I didn't realize I was going to have a pic of Pokey in this post, so I'd included one down here. Just hope you all don't get tired of seeing her.

Pokey is doing great, leaping around and pouncing. Not all the time of course, but often enough to make me happy. I finally figured out how to get the capsules in her. I threw a can of tuna packed in water (not the can, just the tuna and tuna water) into a blender along with some additional water and zuzzed it up. It's a disgusting sludge but miraculously Pokey loves it even with the contents of the capsule stirred in. That is sooo much easier than the wrestling sessions we were having. Just have to keep other cats away, which is a tad bit harder.

Unfortunately my bad knee blew up some last night and is swollen this morning. This is what I get for putting off calling an orthopedist.

11 comments:

Victoria Findlay Wolfe said...

your letters are so impressive. I love that little America quit you did. Are you making Pokey her own little quilt? Might as well put all your great pokey letter ideas to work!

YankeeQuilter said...

Never get tired of Pokey poses! My fat letters are a bit large...hope that is OK. After seeing them DH says I need to redo my name letter...not sure if it is the letters are better or he can see the primary colors better?!

Sherry said...

I bet the really long skinny letters would work well on a quilt that was meant to lay flat (like on a bed). . .the words would probably be very easy to read.

Donna said...

glad you were able to find a solution to feeding pokey her meds -- when I had to feed just one cat something special, she'd get locked in the bathroom when I had a bath with a food dish :-) the others were jealous, but it kept them out without feeling too mean...

Love the fonts you're exploring. a natural "next step" to all these letters.

Robin (RsIslandCrafts) said...

I love the Pokey pics. It looks like you have alot of fun trying out different letter styles :)

Loris said...

The skinny letters are great!The different fonts are interesting. I love the America quilt and the cat. Keep those pics coming. I can never tire of Pokey's picture or any of the other cats for that matter.

Bebesboutique said...

Doing fonts on graft paper is the way to go. The Thin letters are great. I have a problem Of doing my letter huge!

Never get tired of seeing pictures of Pokey!

Sew Create It - Jane said...

I get it!!...I was never able to quite get my head around the free pieced letters, but seeing them drafted on graph paper just gave me that "ah-ha" moment. So yes...the graph paper is very helpful :o)

Kathleen C said...

Thanks very much for the graphed skinny letters, Tonya. I've just made my first letters and found your alphabet tutorials very good to follow, and your quilts help with visualization. I've joined LibQuilters (Yahoo group) which is lots of fun. Kathleen

jacquie said...

i love the super skinny letters...i need to play more with letters. i'm still working on my name...how many times have you read that?

Unknown said...

Playing with letters is so much fun and small differences can make such a difference with readability, mood, and impact.

The picture of a healthy Pokey with the little quilt is a nice shot of color and good news. Glad she is better!