This week’s design is similar to last week’s – the basic flower motif is the same – but a few tweaks to the block arrangement and layout produce a different look and feel.

This design feels like a cousin of Sunday sketch #329, where I also used curvy cutouts in the tips of the flower petals. I like how they make the flower motifs a little different, but also help to create interesting secondary shapes between the blocks.

   

In those first few versions, I’ve added sashing to give the flowers a little breathing room. Without the sashing, you can probably see more easily how this week’s design is so similar to last week’s: those black four-leaf clover shapes created by the corners of 4 adjacent blocks were just more flowers in Sunday sketch #421.

Without sashing, the design is bordering on too busy for me – I feel like all the different elements are competing too much with each other. Adding sashing helps to relax things a bit, while still retaining all of the elements (albeit with some minor changes).

I like the smaller curvy cutouts in the flower petals, but they do create a lot of movement and visual interest in the design, which could be distracting. I changed them up a bit by replacing them with a looser curve (just a single drunkard’s path or quarter-circle block, rather than three). Now, instead of four-leaf clovers between the flower blocks, there are just circles (or maybe squircles, thanks to the sashing).

   

I keep showing you examples with a dark background, but the design works with a lighter background too – I just flipped the light/dark parts of the inner flowers instead.

   

I like those simpler versions just as much, I think. They’d be slightly quicker/easier to make, too (fewer curves to sew!).

Here’s the original with a lighter background. I’m a big fan of using consistent colouring in block-based designs, where at least one element of the block is coloured the same across the quilt (in this case, the centre and inner petals of the flowers). Of course, you could make each block unique, but I often find that’s a bit visually overwhelming.

I’m very tempted to dig through my stash for my kitschy floral prints to see if they’d work in a design like this. Even though I design my sketches with plain colours (and mostly sew with solids; that’s just the way my brain works), I think this one could work with prints? I rarely mock up designs with prints in Electric Quilt 8, because they often don’t look great and (I think) don’t really reflect how a quilt would look in real life. This is where a test block would come in handy! (I’m notoriously bad with test blocks; I’d rather cut out fabric for an entire quilt before bothering with a test block.)

But anyway, like last week’s design, this week’s uses large and small curves. Chain-piecing would be your friend! You’d also need sashing strips, and I’ve added a plain border to these designs too.