This week’s sketch incorporates a bunch of features I’ve used in recent sketches. I think that’s the thing with creativity: the more you use it, the more you have.

I’ve combined the sawtooth star block with curvy corners (see Sunday sketches #492, #493, #494), some eight-pointed stars (hmm, I haven’t used them since #451?!), alternating blocks with curvy corners (see #501), smaller centre circles (most recently used in #502), a leaf shape (which I talk about in the blog post for #502), and interacting blocks (like in #490, #492).

I started off showing the multicolour version, because I think the 5 × 5 layout of these blocks showcases a five-colour palette really well (well, seven-colour, once you include the background colour and shared block colour). In the multicolour versions, I make sure that all blocks feature some of the background colour (to avoid things feeling too heavy/clunky) and a shared colour (for consistency). In most cases, that’s a pinky cream (creamy pink?), but it should be fairly easy to spot.

But I think the design also looks great in just three colours. (I also love this dusky pink and dark brown combo.) Both block types have at least three elements, so it’s easy to ensure that they include all three colours.

   

   

I love the secondary shapes that emerge (look at those big squircles in the background!!). They’re a bit more obvious with the simpler palettes, I think. And maybe also when the mid-range colour is used as the background (rather than the lightest or darkest colour).

   

It’s not so easy to tell, but the blocks are interacting with each other a smidge. Some of the base colour of the eight-pointed star blocks (so, not the background colour, but the colour behind the star itself) extends into the adjacent sawtooth star blocks. You can see the difference in the two designs below; on the right, I’ve removed the thin strips of colour around the outside of the sawtooth star blocks. Adding them back in kinda extends those eight-pointed star blocks a smidge. It also means that the pointy bits of the stars’ arms in adjacent blocks are far enough away from each other to not look weird when they don’t touch. (Would that bother you? Probably not. Would it bother me? Yep.)

   

I think in all the versions up until now, I’ve used the background colour for all the stars’ arms. But I can use the shared (pinky cream / creamy pink) colour for some of them instead. Lots of potential for different colour placement!

Here are those three versions again, with the darker reddish brown and pinky cream switching places.

   

I’m using my Sudoku colouring approach, of course. Once I’ve settled on a colour arrangement that I’m happy with, it’s easy enough to swap things in and out in Electric Quilt 8. I know I keep banging on about Tara Glastonbury’s Curated Colour this year, but I found it really helpful in encouraging me to combine colours that I never would’ve thought of before… and just generally to think about mixing colours that I don’t normally use. I’ve been trying to keep practising that.

Making this week’s sketch into a quilt would be fairly straightforward, I think. You’d need quarter-circle curves in various sizes, some sawtooth and eight-pointed stars, some thin strips of colour, and a border (if you like to set off your design with a border, like I do). I’d probably use templates to get some of the shapes – particularly the curves, and maybe also the arms of the eight-pointed stars (which are just triangle-in-a-square blocks, if I remember correctly). Nothing too taxing.

I’ve been doing a lot of block-based designs lately, possibly because they’re my default starting point when my design brain feels a bit empty and I’m not really sure what I want to create. Luckily I’ve used a lot of shapes lately that are at the forefront of my mind and can be plucked out and reused!