More curves this week. Does this leaf motif have a name? It’s a fairly common/popular shape, but I’ve tried to introduce some minor variations to keep it interesting.

The design started off a little simpler, using leaf shapes separated by sashing to avoid bulk (below, left). There’s something about this retro design that I really love, but it’s pretty basic. It reminds me of 70s wallpaper.

Each leaf shape is made from double drunkard’s path blocks and a few rectangles, which offer up some interesting opportunities for playing with colour and design (below, right).

    

Suddenly the leaf shapes aren’t so prominent, and those collections of rectangles take on their own identity. The next step was to modify those rectangles to become flying geese or half-square triangles, for something a little different.

Funnily enough, though, this version looked a little familiar….

Before I post a design to the Sunday sketch series, I often search my Pinterest boards to make sure it’s not something that someone else has already created. In this case, I soon realised that my design – particular the last version shown here, with the ends of the leaves filled in – is quite similar to the Trellis quilt pattern from Heather Black (Quilt-achusetts). Heather’s pattern used different coloured fabrics to emphasise the double drunkard’s paths and the rectangles at the ends, and she added a (green) square inside the leaf shapes. She also arranged the blocks in a slightly different way, using negative space at the top left and bottom right of the quilt top.

In my design (particularly the first one, at the top of this page), I think the sashing and other spacing between the blocks gives the whole design a lighter feel. The consistent colouring also emphasises different features within the design.

Quilting’s all about joining shapes formed by arcs and lines, and there’s only so many ways you can combine circles and rectangles to create new designs. Similarities are inevitable, but I won’t post a design if I feel like it’s too close to something else out there. In this case, I feel like the differences outweigh the similarities. What do you think?