This blocky sketch is the last in my latest series of connected designs, which were all based on (or inspired by) the heart shape that I introduced in Sunday sketch #506. Yep, they’re related!

I took the overlapping cashews from Sunday sketch #508 and just replaced the curves with straight lines. This is an approach I often use in designing; swap straight lines with curves, or vice versa, to see what happens.

Anyway, below left is a version of Sunday sketch #508; below right is what happens when all the curves are replaced by their closest straight-line equivalent. Quarter-circles become stepped squares, orange peels become diagonally connected squares, and so on.

   

And then I just played around with colour a bit.

Everything felt a bit too chunky though. I decided to change the blocky cashews into elongated shapes, to achieve two things: removing (by filling in) those empty white squares (which contributed to the chunkiness), and interrupting those darker X shapes (created by sets of 8 smaller squares).

In the end, I’ve got these sort of hunched worm shapes, but I achieved what I wanted, with a few unanticipated delights: the thin sashing is now more obvious and helps to highlight those notches more, and the overlaps between the blocks (creating those small darker squares) now echo those within the blocks. Nice!

I also reduced the number of blocks in the layout. Using only partial blocks around the outside of the design also helps to increase the amount of background colour and gives the eye somewhere to rest too.

And though you can make use of the transparency effect when colouring those overlaps (creating the small squares in the above versions), the colours you choose don’t have to make sense. Pink and yellow don’t create a vibrant orange (above), just like watermelon and bright blue will never make acid yellow (below left) and pale pink and dark green won’t give you blue (below right). It’s more about choosing the right vibrancy and value, I think.

   

I think I still prefer the curvy/cashewy version of this design*, but this one would probably be easier to make, particularly at a reasonable size (the limit to how small I can sew a decent curve means that the curvy version would end up quite large for me). It’s all just squares and rectangles, plus some sashing and an outer border.

* Having said that, I keep looking back at the pink, yellow and orange version of this one and wondering if I should make it…. or maybe I should get outside my comfort zone and choose a wackier colour combo??