I’ve been revisiting a lot of older designs lately, and sticking to a fairly basic toolbox of simple shapes and repetition. This one reuses a shape that features in one of my favourite two-colour quilts.

Ever since designing Sunday sketch #432 (and making a quilt from it), I’ve loved those sort of blocky, stepped shapes. Here I’ve used them as background shapes (there are 9, in the middle of the design), with coloured crosses making up the spaces in between. Can you see the ones I mean? Here’s the quilt I’m talking about; you can probably spot them now.

I would’ve sworn I’ve used this shape a lot, but I think perhaps I’ve designed much more with it than I’ve shared. Looking back at old posted sketches, I can really only see similarities in #432 and #500.

I like how they’re in the background in this week’s design, formed by surrounding blocks. I realised as I was playing with this design that the colours could be used in the crosses themselves or in their surrounds. (I like to keep a bit of background colour in each block, to give the eye somewhere to rest and stop things from feeling too heavy.)

It’s funny what a difference that little tweak makes. To my mind (or eye), the design on the right feels a bit more solid/grounded, whereas the one on the left feels lighter. I’d probably opt for the version on the left if I made this one. I should’ve tried a mix of both block types!

Having said all that, a different palette of brighter colours helps to lighten the heavier version, I think. (Or maybe it’s just because showing it on its own eliminates the comparison!)

This week’s sketch would be super-easy to make. It’s all squares and rectangles, and there’s enough repetition that batch cutting and piecing should be possible. I think it would work in prints and/or solids, and with yardage or scraps. This feels like one of those designs that you could whip up in a weekend!