A while back I went through a bit of an Irish chain phase, and I ended up designing far more sketches than I could post (or far more than I thought anyone could bear to see). But enough time’s passed that I think I can get away with one more! 🙂

I’ll show you where I started with this one. I used an elongated chain motif – rather than diagonally linking nine-patches together, I’ve used 25-patches (with an extra square in between) – and then filled the inside spaces with some L-shaped arms. I like how the arms touch their tips to the chain, kinda enclosing a square of background colour. If you get your eye in, you can start to see a lot more squares emerging from the design.

And here are the next few iterations, from left to right… I capped off the ends of the light pink crosses, then eliminated any incomplete crosses from around the edges of the design, then played with the colouring of the four alternate crosses in the middle. There are soooooo many more options I could’ve shown you here, but this should give you a good idea of the number/nature of tweaks that are possible.

But I think things get interesting when you add a fourth colour. Depending on where it’s placed, it can push elements forward or pull them back. You can also get that effect (I forget the name) where some of the background colour looks like it’s lighter or darker depending on what’s next to it (or what other colours it’s trapped between). I love it when that happens!

In most of the versions above, the Irish chain is evident in the design – those diagonal steps of squares leading across the page. But then I thought it could be fun to take those out, basically by colouring the outside edges in the same colour. So the outer chains are effectively obscured while the inner ones are still there, lightening up the middle a smidge.

In the end, I had to substitute in a dark orange for the yellow – my too-often-used combo of dark blue, pink and hot orange. Hey, what can I say? It looks good! 🙂