I’ve mentioned before that I find inspiration in a lot of different places. An obvious one is Instagram. I don’t just follow quilters; I follow painters and potters, sketchers and screenprinters, woodworkers and weavers. I also follow fellow art lovers who post images of artworks that inspire them. It’s a great way to see stuff that I wouldn’t otherwise find.

Recently I discovered @dust_jackets, and scrolled back through his/her/their feed to find a stunning image of a thick black line tracing bold shapes against an off-white background:

It was hashtagged #jodelahaut and #1953. So who’s Jo Delahaut?

Turns out he’s one of Belgium’s first abstract artists, and a key figure in the geometric abstraction movement. His profile on Artnet includes at least two untitled pieces using a similar concept and shapes: the one from 1953, and another one from 1954. Beautiful.

So anyway, back to the art: I couldn’t get one of the motifs – the one that looks half-rectangle, half-circle – out of my head, so I decided to play around with it a bit. I wanted to explore that shape, but also the idea of a single line tracing through a bunch of different shapes (a little like my Sound Maze pattern).

I started by recreating the half-rectangle, half-circle shape, in a more condensed form. I alternated the direction of the shapes to add a little more interest and movement.

These shapes look a bit like letters to me… ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’ and ‘e’ seem to pop out. Can you see them?

Then I changed the motif to circular on both sides, just to see what it looked like.

I can’t decide if I like it more or not! I do like those large (broken) rectangles that appear to float above the shapes though (in both designs).

Finally, I decided to try the other alternative: the version with all hard angles and no curves.

It’s funny how similar and yet how different the three designs are. And I still can’t tell which one I like the most!

I’m not sure how I’d translate these designs into actual quilt patterns. I like the idea of piecing the dark lines against a light background, but it would also be possible to appliqué strips if you were careful to keep everything lined up very straight.