This week’s sketch is pretty basic and fairly traditional, but I like some of the movement it creates (and the options it provides), so here we go…!

The design started out a little more complicated (more on that later), but I pared it back to an alternating arrangement of four-pointed stars and crosses. Emptying out their centres (by colouring the squares in the background colour) helps to introduce consistency across the blocks. And the angles between the blocks help to trick the eye into seeing curves.

Here’s the reverse colourway. Yep, that’s purple you’re seeing. A rarity, I know!

Introducing a third colour presents some opportunity for colour play and differentiating some of those crosses. If you look closely, you can see that the crosses and stars aren’t the same size, so they’re not actually the repeating blocks (even though I just referred to them as blocks…); some are made by the sashing between blocks.

Here are a few other colouring options for adding/removing elements.

 

I mentioned that these designs started off a little more complicated… here’s the original design – a relatively busy star-like block with triangles on its sides that combine with squares in the sashing to create those interstitial four-pointed stars. Of course, with more elements in the design, there are more colouring options too. Here are just a few.

 

 

I don’t love those designs enough to give them their own blog post; they’re just a bit too traditional for me. But I’m happy to share them here so you can see the origin of this week’s sketch.

It’s also possible to play with colour across the design. Here I’ve made changes across the diagonal from one corner of the design to its opposite corner, just adding or taking away elements. I didn’t overthink this one or spend too long on it, so there’s undoubtedly a better or more cohesive way to approach this concept. But it’s a fun start.

This week’s sketches could be made into quilts using squares, rectangles and triangles. That’s about it! You might want to use templates or paper-piecing to get the triangles just right.