This week’s series of designs is all about retro windmills. And pinwheels. Can you say that ten times fast…?

I came up with this design very quickly in EQ8. I started with an idea of adding a curve to a half-rectangle triangle (why not?), and then playing with placement. I made a square block with two of those shapes facing each other, then repeated them, and rotated them. Then tried to find some retro colour schemes that would fit this mid-century-modern-ish design!

The design offers lots of colouring options (from simple to more complicated). This one reminds me of cotton swabs. I can’t decide if this one’s really my favourite….

More complicated colouring just seems to detract from the simple yet striking design.

Rotating the blocks provides even more colouring options. Check out the pinwheel shapes that emerge when you turn each block 90 degrees. (The windmill shapes are still there too.)

The design works in many different combinations of three colours (or two plus white).

I can create a similar effect with just the pinwheels instead. Same blocks, small variation.

Turning the blocks again can produce a slightly chaotic design. I like this one – at first glance it seems disordered, but when you look more closely, you can see that it’s actually a regular, repetitive layout. The windmill shapes are still there; there are just fewer of them (only four complete windmills per colour), with hints of others around the outside.

I stuck with the slightly offset layout, just for something different. But many of these designs would work in a square layout with smaller, matching borders (or none at all).

Each block is made up of drunkard’s path blocks or semicircles, plus two half-rectangle triangles. A chain-piecing dream!