Borden: Basket weaving techniques on coming show

Information on Mediterranean cooking, choosing fabrics for quilts, and solutions for small space living will be the featured topics on “Creative Living” on Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. and on Thursday at noon. (All times are Mountain.)

Maria Benardis will talk about some of the ingredients in ancient Greek recipes. She explains that their healing and medicinal use in ancient times is still current even today. Her book is titled “Cooking & Eating: Wisdom for Better Health.” Benardis lives in New York city.

Creative Living

For many people, selecting the right fabrics for quilts is the biggest hurdle. Marci Baker will show how to pick fabrics knowing that it will look great when you are finished. She’ll go over values, a palette of colors and show how to use a color wheel with a viewing window to aid in the process. Baker’s company is Alicia’s Attic, Inc. in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Kimball Starr is an interior designer, and she is going to talk about some of the challenges of small space living and then present solutions for the overall look of the space. She always considers activities that the space allows as well as adequate storage. Her company is Kimball Starr Interior Design in San Francisco, California.

Information on cake decorating, making dolls, and basket weaving techniques for wall painting will be the featured topics on “Creative Living” on Tuesday at noon and on Saturday at 2 p.m. (All times are Mountain).

Nancy Siler, Wilton Enteprises, will talk about the differences in buttercream and royal icing, and then show how to decorate a meadow cake using both products. Siler is from Woodridge, Illinois.

Denise White, owner of The Cat’s Pyjamas, will show how to make some unusual dolls, including a rag doll and a cat doll. White is from Scottsboro, Alabama.

Barbara Wurden is a creative artist who will show how to do a basket weaving technique on walls using a semi-gloss enamel paint. She’ll also show how to make your own combing tool. Her company is called Faux Fun and she lives in Long Beach, California.

Value Not Color

The most important quality of fabric when designing for the illusion of depth is value. This term describes the darkness or lightness of a color. Seeing color as value is a skill that can be learned. There are many methods for analyzing the value of a piece of fabric.

My favorite way to determine value is to squint. This limits the amount of light entering the eye, and then all colors are somewhat reduced to shades of gray. Narrowing the eyes so less light comes in reduces the element of color and increases perception of value. Squinting also allows the comparison of the lightness or darkness of busy or larger prints.

Judging Fabrics

Begin to compare fabrics by laying one over the other. Choose a fabric you can be sure of, perhaps a definite light. Lay it out flat. Then lay another fabric flat over the first fabric. Unfold it enough to eliminate most thickness, as this can cast a shadow. Are both fabrics light? Is one lighter than the other? When you have as many light fabrics as needed, begin to choose definite dark fabrics. Last of all, choose mediums. Lay a medium fabric across the light fabric and then across the dark fabric. Try to find a medium that is exactly in between the light and the dark value for the strongest 3-D effects.

Fabrics to Use

One hundred percent cotton blouse-weight fabrics are the best choices for 3-D quilts, as for most quilts that are going to be actually used on a bed, or washed to clean them. Prints can be wonderfully effective in a 3-D pattern, adding texture to the illusion. Small prints and solids are the easiest to work with. Large prints sometimes are more difficult to assign a value to, since cutting may break the pattern into sections that are different values. The safety choice for a large print is a fabric where the foreground of the print is almost the same value as the background (a low-contrast print.) Limiting use of a large print to one value of the design may be wise.

“Creative Living" is produced and hosted by Sheryl Borden. The show is carried by more than 118 PBS stations in the United States, Canada, Guam and Puerto Rico and is distributed by Westlink, Albuquerque.