I’ve been trawling through lots of older sketches lately, as I haven’t done many new designs in a long time. This is a design that I’ve jokingly been calling ‘sausage factory’ (in my mind!). Once you see those elongated ovals connecting diagonally, it’s hard not to see sausage links.

I feel like there’s something about scale that determines whether those secondary shapes /effects are obvious. Looking at a thumbnail pic of this design, they’re not apparent at all. But at this scale, they are. I wonder if they’d be so obvious in an actual quilt?

There are ways to add and subtract from this design. Subtracting some of the orange peels from the outer edges makes those sausages a little clearer….

…whereas adding in some of the quarter-square triangle blocks emphasises the sawtooth star shapes instead, with the sausages appearing almost as ghostly shapes within. I haven’t decided which version I prefer.

This week’s design has echoes of previous Sunday sketches. It reminds me a little of Sunday sketches #437 (more sausages!) and #468 (alternating quarter-square triangle blocks with a second block).

There are (at least) two ways you could construct a quilt from this design. I’ve imagined it as a grid, on point, of quarter-square triangle blocks, empty (e.g. background) blocks, and orange peel blocks (with each block featuring four orange peels in a cross shape). I guess you could also use a standard layout (that is, not on point) of economy blocks and orange peel blocks (with the orange peels themselves aligned vertically and horizontally… you’d probably need a template for that block). I’ve added a border, too, just to give the outer shapes a bit of space to breathe 🙂

I like designs that use an alternating layout of just two block types. They’re simple and straightforward but can be so effective! Definitely more contemporary than modern, but you could always play with scale and colour and all that if you were determined to make a modern quilt.