It’s my 400th Sunday sketch – woo hoo! Every time I hit a big round number, I marvel at the fact that I’ve managed to post a new quilt design every week since mid-2016. And it’s still fun! Thanks for following along 🙂

This week’s sketch is the first in a series that I’ll share over five (!) weeks. They all feature the same block, but in different orientations, layouts and colours. Here’s where they started…

I’ve never sewn a clamshell before, and I’m not sure I’ve ever designed with one either? But I got this idea into my head and needed to get it out. And I’m glad I did, because it led me to a bunch of other really interesting designs.

Here I’ve used back-to-back clamshells that have an internal half-circle to bring some visual interest to what’s otherwise just empty space. And then I added other half-circles into the remaining negative space (the circles created by the clamshell ‘tails’ (I have no idea what this part is actually called, if anything)).

To be completely honest, the design didn’t start there… it started here, with the clamshells repeated in a standard layout. I realised after a while that this design reminded me of the AustraliaPost logo!

 

I really like that simple version, but it’s always good to keep iterating, just in case.

I also tried rotating the clamshells, but this version feels a bit messy maybe. Sometimes I think if it takes me too long to see the repetition/pattern in a design, it’s just too busy. I’m on the fence with this one.

So back to the standard arrangement. I tried making the half-circles into full circles too. I don’t love this version… I like filling up that space with something, but that circle feels too big.

 

But there are ways to keep the full circles while minimising the ‘big’ feeling. Here I’ve split them down the middle. In the version on the left, I’ve coloured only one half, using the background colour to ‘fill’ the other half. In the version on the right, I’ve coloured one half of the clamshell in the background colour, which makes the full circles seem less heavy (to me, anyway).

 

I played around with other ways to colour each part of the design. This next version might be the easiest way to see the basic block that’s the foundation of this week’s (and the next four weeks’) design(s): not actually a clamshell, but a quarter-circle incorporating a half-circle.

I also tried playing with the colouring so the bottom part of each clamshell corresponds to the top part of the clamshell beneath it. I was trying to go for a ‘hanging bauble’ kind of effect here, which didn’t quite work. But there might be some potential there. In any case, it’s always fun to play with colour.

So, since the basic unit of these designs it not actually a clamshell, you wouldn’t need any special tips for making one of these sketches into an actual quilt. Having said that, I’ve also never sewn a quarter-circle that incorporates a half-circle either. I guess you’d have to make the half-circle unit as a full square (either by adding a rectangle, or just cutting a larger piece for the concave shape of the half-circle), then subcut that to make the quarter-circle. Or make the quarter-circle first, and then cut into it to add the half-circle? I know it’s doable, because Tara Glastonbury used this same shape in her quilt Laneways. So I will have to ask her how she did it!