If you read the full blog post for last week’s sketch, you’ll be able to spot the single tweak that led to this week’s designs: I changed the squares in the checkerboard blocks to half-square triangles.

There’s still a mix of 9-patch, 16-patch and 25-patch blocks, and they’re still set on point.

There’s a lot of movement and energy in this design, so I’ve started with a slightly pared-back version. Here’s the fuller layout that more closely resembles the last few designs from last week.

By taking care how I rotated the blocks in each column, I ensured that the straight edges of one colour matched the same colour in adjacent blocks. That creates those channels of solid zig-zags running vertically between the columns.

   

For some reason, I prefer the blocks rotated so the diagonal lines within the smaller squares run horizontally rather than vertically. So let’s switch for a bit.

In these next two versions, the straight edges of the blocks point up or down depending on which background colour I choose; look carefully and you can see that the blocks themselves are coloured exactly the same way in both versions – it’s just the solid blocks that have changed colour.

   

I kinda don’t like those hard edges though. So instead, I can fill those empty spaces with blocks, but colour only the outside triangles within the block. That lets me create those jagged, zig-zag edges again.

   

Or I can add a few zig-zag edges at the sides and use different background colours at the top and bottom of the design to offset the triangle colours.

I love all the movement in these designs – the diagonal grid, plus the horizontal lines, keep your eye moving round and round.

I can also set the blocks in a standard layout, so the grid becomes horizontal/vertical and the lines between the triangles run diagonally. Those solid channels between the blocks are still there, also running diagonally now. And I can just use solid colour for some of the top left and bottom right blocks to let those triangles hang free.

I kinda even like a full frame of blocks: there’s so much going on, but the two-colour palette helps to control the chaos (mostly).

Just as last week’s design required only squares to make into a quilt, this week’s requires only half-square triangles (in three sizes). I think these designs would work well as improv (that is, not requiring precision to make the HSTs); there’s not a lot of points-matching, and I think the designs would work even with a bit of wonkiness.

I’ve used a two-colour palette here, but I think you could also expand that. I don’t love the hard lines that are created when each block is coloured separately, but using one colour consistently across all the blocks helps to reduce the busy-ness.

Or interconnected blocks could be coloured the same, emphasising that diagonal movement again.

I still feel like the two-colour version packs more of a punch, but this last version’s growing on me. Maybe in slightly fewer colours with some more order to the colour placement?

   

I’m very tempted to make this one, but imprecisely – that is, not trimming my HSTs to the exact right size and piecing them carefully to ensure matching points, etc. I don’t think it’d be that noticeable (even to me!) if a few points weren’t matched perfectly. I’ll have to add it to my (looooong) list of possible makes.

I tried this concept with one more shape, replacing the half-square triangles with something else, so check in next week to see the next iteration of this design.