I’m continuing my series of Irish chain-inspired designs this week. You might be able to see how this sketch incorporates elements of that traditional quilt design while also straying from it a little bit.

I’ve used a grid of nine-patches, but instead of connecting diagonally (as in an Irish chain design), they’re separated by one square’s worth of space. Imagine an Irish chain quilt with sashing, and you’ve pretty much got this week’s sketch (with some added bits!).

It might be a bit clearer if I show you where I started.

So there’s the traditional criss-cross of connected squares – in a standard Irish chain quilt, they’re created by an alternating grid of checkerboard nine-patches and solid squares. Here, I’ve added another square between the nine-patches, to elongate the diagonals a little. I’ve also added some larger squares of colour in the background.

It’s cute, and I like it, but of course I kept playing. I tried to lighten things a little by removing some of the darker squares and even some of the colours (by introducing some of the pale background pink into the blocks).

   

I like those too, but all the horizontal and vertical lines are making things feel a little block-y and rigid. I thought introducing some different angles might help.

I really like this version, and I think it could work really well as a quilt pattern. I can imagine it in a bunch of solids or even in prints. Very cute!

I did try the same ‘lightening’ approaches as before though – removing some of the darker squares and introducing a bit of background colour into the blocks. Hmm… these are cute too!

   

Finally, I did what I often do when I feel like a design still has a smidge more potential: I rotated everything by 45 degrees, so it’s designed on-point.

I love all these bright colours together, but highlighting the black squares (now on point) is also effective. And I can have a bit of ‘space’ in the coloured crosses or keep them as solid leaves of colour.

   

Even with few discrete elements in each block, there are lots of options for colour placement. Introducing lots of ’empty’ space in the coloured crosses gives the effect of ribbons being folded over and overlapping to create the larger shapes. And the basic nine patches – which are kinda holding everything together – can be emphasised or de-emphasised.

   

   

All you’d need to make one of these designs into a quilt is squares and half-square triangles. You could piece strips together then subcut them to make sets of 2 squares and 3 squares for the coloured crosses.  It’d be so easy to batch-sew this one.

I often search the web for similar designs when I’m creating Sunday sketches, particularly if a design feels like it should have been made already. The ribbon-like effect of this one felt like something that someone else must’ve tried. (I haven’t found a foolproof way of searching for similar designs online, but I use Google image searches, other reverse-image searches and keyword searches to see if I can find anything similar.) In this case, I found the Heyfield quilt pattern from Jemima’s Creative Quilting, which has some similar features but is also a bit different (the centre of each cross in that pattern has angles rather than a nine patch, and there’s no real echo of an Irish chain in there). If you know of a quilt or quilt design that’s more similar to this week’s sketch(es), let me know!

Anyway, I’m really tempted to try this week’s sketch to see if it’s as simple to piece as I think it would be. I just need to choose which version to make!