I didn’t set out to do another basic design using a warm palette this week… but when a design uses multiple colours, I tend to gravitate to the pinks and oranges in Electric Quilt 8. I use the Kona solid colours as my default fabric library, and I guess those colours have the best mix of shades. It’s either that, or cooler blues and greens, and I was feeling warmer this week.

Anyway… I’ve spent a bit of time with quarter-rectangle triangles lately, for a few reasons. One: the release of Latifah Saafir’s HuRTy ruler, which she and I used to create the Paperdrop quilt pattern, is giving me more ideas of how to use half-rectangle triangles and quarter-rectangle triangles. And two: I’ve spent the last week or two seeing pics of Avalanche, one of the four quilts I had hanging at QuiltCon in Atlanta and which is entirely made from quarter-rectangle triangles.

In this week’s design, I’ve just set the blocks on point and coloured some of the triangles in the background colour to introduce some negative space. Otherwise it all feels a bit crowded.

Here’s a multicoloured version. There’s obviously opportunity for transparency here, but I tried not to use it too much; I like the idea of just mixing a bunch of different colours together and letting the contrast create movement in the design.

This last version reminds me a little of Sunday sketch #146 – some zig zagging, lots of angles, and a similar palette.

This week’s designs use quarter-rectangle triangles and some borders. Given the complicated colour placement, it might be easier to use paper piecing (which is how I made Avalanche), although if you were organised enough, you could probably make the QRTs the usual way without too much fuss. I haven’t used the HuRTy ruler to make QRTs yet, but I really want to!