I always seem to have one or two unrealised ideas in my head when it comes to quilt designing – vague concepts or hazy pictures that float around my brain but won’t quite land on paper (or screen). One of these ideas is for an Australian native plants/flowers quilt – I’m determined to design a modern quilt based on banksias or wattles one of these days!

Recently while I was developing banksia ideas (none of which worked!), I came up with an entirely different flower design that felt fun enough to share.

I’ve posted quite a few floral Sunday sketches over the years – some that are definitely flowery (like #428, #421, #313, #243, #109, and my first wattle design), and others that are just flower-ish (like #436, #423, #412, #386, #385, and #344). But there’s always room for more flowers!

I started out with single flowers – well, at least that’s what I’m calling those overlapping circles. On their own, they probably wouldn’t feel very floral; I guess the leaves underneath are doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to conveying a flowery feel 🙂

Maybe changing the colour palette would help a bit?

   

I tried doubling up the ‘buds’, but this version didn’t quite work. I think there’s too much vertical space between the plants in each column. I do like the overall flower shape though; they’re like big figure-eights created by a single swirling loop going round and round.

But as an overall design… it’s not quite there yet. So I played around with the number of buds on each plant, mixing things up a bit. I also tried a layout of just 5 columns across instead of 6.

Hmm, that feels more interesting. The longer stretches of buds (I maxed out at three) felt a little lavender-y or bluebell-y, hence this next colour palette.

I really like this mix of different sizes. This version is a lot like Sunday sketch #196, which I posted in March 2020. That one also features columns of flowers of varying heights – except the repeated unit there is the leaves rather than the flowers.

Returning to a six-column layout again, I tried a bit more of an ‘organised chaos’ approach. There’s a mix of single, double and triple flowers (or buds; I can’t quite decide what to call the basic unit), but I’ve followed a pattern in their arrangement rather than going for a random layout.

And then the only thing left to do is play with the colour palette! In the earlier versions, I tended to use a darker colour for the orange peel-shaped overlap between the two circles, but that’s not entirely necessary.

   

This week’s sketch was also inspired by the gothic (pointed) arch shape, which I credit to Daisy Aschehoug (@warmfolk). She’s the one who introduced me to this shape, supplied me with templates, and has inspired me through her own designs and ideas.

The gothic arch shape makes up the middle of each ‘bud’ – the vertical, orange-peel-like shape where the two circles overlap. Because the Gothic arch is made from two overlapping quarter-circles, it works really well alongside quarter circle units. So to make this design into a quilt, you’d just need quarter circles, gothic arches, and some orange peels for the leaves. A bouquet of curves!