I love a good tessellation, and this week’s design is a really simple yet striking one. It’s an iteration of Sunday sketch #286, using quarter-circles instead of half-square triangles (or half-circles instead of flying geese).

Each block extends the star-like motif into the four adjacent blocks. So each of those swirly arms starts in one block and ends in another. The simplicity of the design lends itself to a two-colour palette, and I can never get enough of this warm yellow!

I often like to ‘float’ a design within wide borders to kinda set it off, but this design works well in a tiled, edge-to-edge layout too.

The blocks can also be set on point, which makes those four-armed star shapes look just a little bit more swirly.

The design can incorporate additional colours, but I don’t think it’s as interesting, to be honest. I also removed the outer stars in these versions. Maybe they would help?

I still prefer the first version!

These sketches could be made into quilts using quarter-circle units (also called drunkard’s path blocks) and a few squares. You’d have to be pretty confident sewing curves (or willing to get comfy with them). I find bigger curves easier to sew; in the top design, 3″ (finished) drunkard’s paths would make each block 12″ square. That design uses a 6 x 6 block layout (only parts of the outer rows and columns are coloured in to complete the motifs from adjacent blocks) – so, 72″ square. I’m pretty tempted to make this one!