I liked last week’s block, so I kept playing with it. Here’s where I ended up!

This isn’t where I began, though, so let me take a few steps back to show you my work.

I used the block from last week in a standard layout, and made spaces between these blocks for another type of block. I like mixing two blocks in one design, as long as they work well together. That’s the hard part! I decided that I wanted some elements of adjacent blocks to touch, so I tried out an eight-pointed star. Its long pointy arms are spaced just right to touch the tips of those outer rectangles.

Normally I try to maintain some sort of consistency across different blocks by repeating elements or colours. Here, the angles in the stars don’t match anything in the other block; the only shape that they share is the square in the middle of the blocks. It’s angled in the main block but not in the star. Hmm… is that enough of a similarity to tie things together?

Hmm. Possibly not.

So I added another shape into the main block: another square in the middle, a bit like the centre of an economy block. Now the middle squares in all blocks are the same.

I can colour them all the same…

   

…or alternate the colouring…

   

These are OK, but I was still looking for something with a bit more oomph, So I took the design one step further. I switched the whole thing to an on-point layout, and increased the colour palette a smidge. (OK, I guess that’s two steps 🙂 )

   

I’m not sure why I like this version more. Normally I prefer eight-pointed stars in a standard layout; I feel like their starriness is lost when they’re rotated (the on-point version feels a bit like a Maltese cross instead). And square blocks can have a bit more movement when they’re on point. But I dunno… I just like this version more. Maybe because it feels a little unexpected? Maybe the added colour is doing all the heavy lifting? Who knows.

After I first drafted this blog post, Tara Glastonbury released the first month of her Curated Colour series – a downloadable, digital colour palette with multiple combinations to kick-start your own creativity. My first thought was “What an awesome idea!” (my second thought was “Of course!!”, because Tara is amazing at picking out colour palettes). But I have to admit, when I saw that the first issue was based around Kona’s Colour of the Year… mehhhhh. Purple. (Well, ‘Nocturne‘, which is just a fancy way of saying ‘dark purple’). I’ll be honest, I’m in the “no purple” camp. I know there are quite a few of us. I’m not saying it’s a good thing; it is what it is. I’ve just never liked purple (of any kind: violet, berry, crocus, lilac… blegghhhhhhh), and I’ve never been able to use it in a quilt.

So anyway, probably sensing my purple-phobia, Tara sent me issue 1 of Curated Colour. Hmm. I opened a new file in EQ8, selected just the 12 Kona colours in Tara’s palette (she also gives the equivalent colours in Devonstone solids and Painter’s Palette solids) and deleted the rest. Then imported the blocks from this week’s sketch and recoloured the main quilt design. Again and again and again (it’s fun!). I did avoid the purples (mostly). But the 12-colour palette for Issue #1 (January) includes plenty of non-purples, and Tara also provides some 2-colour and 5-colour combinations from the same palette, which helps to show how different colours work together.

It even prompted me to try this week’s sketch in only two colours. I’m not sure why I didn’t do that before?

   

   

And they look good?!!

The top row uses Kona Nocturne and Peacock; the bottom uses Nocturne and Bubble Gum. I think even if I’d wanted to use Nocturne, I wouldn’t have been able to find a second colour that works so well alongside it.

I also tried using larger combinations from Tara’s palette of 12 colours. Each issue of Curated Colour includes an example of a quilt design using five colours from the palette, but I struggled to recreate that combination because my designs don’t usually accommodate five colours. Because I have such a hard time creating palettes, I usually stop at four colours. Adding a fifth into this week’s sketch was a bit of a stretch. But I managed to use lots of different four-colour combinations from Tara’s full palette.

Some using a purple…

   

…and others not.

   

Each issue of Curated Colour will also include designs with both light and dark backgrounds, too. But of course, you can mix the colours in whatever combination you like.

I’m excited about having a bit more colour inspiration this year, and a reliable source for new colour palettes and combinations. If you’re interested in getting Curated Colour – the January issue or the whole year’s bundle in advance – head to Tara’s Stitch & Yarn store on Etsy.

Anyway, making this week’s sketch into a quilt would be fairly straightforward. Squares, triangles and rectangles for the main blocks, and squares and triangle-in-a-square units for the eight-pointed stars.

I’m not done with those main blocks, so come back next week to see where I take them next.