It’s been a few weeks since I’ve used any curves in a Sunday sketch, so here’s a design with twice the curves to make up for it.

I’ve used half-circles and half-ovals to create elongated clamshell shapes with what look like hoods. I can’t help but see a crowd of people looking this way and that.

The colouring can be done a little more regularly to highlight different parts of the design – in this case, the elongated curves (I used Jenny Haynes‘ long oval drunkard’s path templates as my inspiration).

I like using colour to highlight those elongated clamshells though: the tops are half-circles (or two drunkard’s path blocks), and the bottoms are two long oval drunkard’s path units.

A two-colour palette can be effective though. Here I’ve alternated the dark/light colours so some of the clamshell shapes are combined with adjacent elongated curves. I love the movement in this design… I feel like my eye jumps from left to right and back again, then diagonally down, then up and around.

This week’s sketch would be relatively straightforward to make into a quilt using drunkard’s path (standard and long oval) templates. Once you’d made the long oval drunkard’s path units, you’d need to add a quarter-circle (or standard drunkard’s path) shape to the bottom. I confess I’ve never sub-cut (or double-pieced? I don’t know what you’d call that approach…) a curve like that before before, but I know Jenny Haynes does it a lot with her designs, and she makes it look easy. (Check out her workshops to see what I mean.)

When I daydreamed this sketch, it was all a bit vague, and what I designed in EQ8 isn’t quite what I’d imagined (although I’m not completely clear about what I had in mind…). I liked these versions enough to share them with you, but it’s definitely a concept I’ll keep exploring.