Category: Sunday sketch
Sunday sketch #171
This week’s design started on my sketchpad. I often doodle half-square triangles or parallelograms, and I began with a shape I’ve used before – overlapping parallelograms that create little cat ears poking out the top (I used something similar in Sunday sketches #114 and #160). I’d never really done much with just that shape though, so I decided to keep working on it. I knew if I wanted to play with colour or transparency, I’d have to recreate the shape in EQ8. So I did.
This design actually started out a little differently… I began with a looser arrangement. The same elements were all there, but the blocks were wider and longer, leaving more negative space.
As always, I’m never completely sure which version I like best. I think in this case, the tighter version with less negative space wins out. I’m not sure why. Maybe because it brings those white squares (on point) a bit closer together and makes them more obvious, which adds another interesting element to the design.
Each design could be translated into a quilt pattern using squares, rectangles, half-square triangles and quarter-square triangles.
Sunday sketch #170
Arrows, this way and that.
This design started out a little… busier, but I pared it down a bit. Here are the precursor designs…
I think the top-right design is a bit too crowded. Maybe a better colour palette would help to differentiate between the 4 directions?
Anyway, I think I prefer a design with some of the blocks left empty. Here’s one with just two colours, crossing diagonally.
See that centre square, on point, where the blocks of different colour overlap? That’s another opportunity for some colour play. You can see it more clearly if I use a different palette.
Of course, I usually go for a regular, symmetrical design first, then follow it up with a more irregular, asymmetrical design.
Lots of opportunity for playing around with colour and placement!
These designs would be pretty easy to translate into a quilt pattern. The arrow heads are just triangles, and the tails are smaller triangles separated by a rectangle. The tails might be easier to make using paper-piecing to get the necessary precision.
Sunday sketch #169
Occasionally I go back to old sketches and keep playing with them to see if I can come up with something I like even more. Often I don’t get the chance, because I get distracted by a new design and move off in a different direction.
I loved Sunday sketch #158 when I posted it, but I soon decided that the design was too busy. I revisited it, introducing some negative space to lighten it a bit.
I kept the original colour scheme, but moved the colours around a bit and gave it a black background. I think that helps to rest the eye while also making the colours pop a little more.
I’ve mentioned before that I love playing with columns of half-square triangles, which is pretty much how this design originally came about. Well, why not pare it back to the basics then, to see what just those columns on their own would look like?
I kinda like this minimalist version, although I wonder if it needs the back story to make sense. Although I don’t know why I wonder that, because none of my other designs has a back story!
Taking it a step further, I decided to add back in more HSTs, to fill those empty black columns.
I added corresponding HSTs, in the same colour, to create columns of stacked diamonds. I kinda like this weird moiré-ish effect.
Here are the three together so you can see the progression from one to the next:
I think I prefer the middle one after all!
