Even though this week’s sketch is quite different from the last three weeks’ sketches, it’s another one inspired by something I saw on my recent trip to Adelaide: fabric!

While wandering the botanic gardens, I spotted a woman wearing some really comfy-looking, palazzo-like pants in this amazing light fabric. It featured what looked like suns in a palette of about 6–8 colours. I didn’t get a chance to ask her about the pants or the fabric, but I tried searching online for them… with no luck (though there are lots of pants out there with sun-like motifs).

I’ve been trying to design a sun-like sketch in Electric Quilt 8 for ages, but I often struggle to create more ‘organic’ designs in that software – it really does lend itself to more standard geometric designs. But this was my inspiration to try again!

I started with circles in the middle, with rays extending out towards the edges. I decided against sharp points at the edges of the blocks, which would also help to avoid too much bulk when joining blocks.

I also tried replacing the circles with squircles. I kinda like this effect, although the blocks look less like suns. And more like…? I’m not really sure.

I also tried a square in the middle, but I didn’t like that so much.

I’ve used a 5-colour palette in this 5 × 5 layout, so each colour is used twice per row and column: once as the ‘sun’ and once as the background colour. Several colour pairs are repeated, and not all 20 pairs are used. I’m not even sure if it would be possible to use them all and still get a balance of colours across all rows and columns. Anyway, I’m happy enough with the colour placement here. I don’t often use a 5-colour palette either, so this has been a fun experiment!

I’d use paper-piecing to create the outer parts of these blocks, and would either piece a circle or squircle into the middle or maybe appliqué one on. (The former would be my preference, but I say that having never tried an inset circle before.) This design makes me so happy though that I’m almost tempted to try it.

Oh, and if you see some pants with a fabric very much like this week’s sketch, please tell me! I’d love to find them and see how close this design is to recreating them 🙂