Category: Sunday sketch
Sunday sketch #88
Last week I started playing around with nine-patches, and this week’s design is an extension of that theme.
The corner squares of each nine-patch are half-square triangles, which means you can squeeze adjacent nine-patches right up against each other. Just using two colours against a background colour (white, in this case) almost brings those crosses to the foreground!
This is a super-simple design that uses only squares, half-square triangles and a few rectangles for sashing. It’s block-based, so would be really quick and easy to make.
(ps. Can you tell that I bought Electric Quilt 8? I’m slowly getting to grips with it. I don’t find it very intuitive, so I haven’t made huge progress yet. Having said that, every time I sit down to practice with it, I seem to create at least one design that I’m happy with!)
Sunday sketch #87
Back to basics this week, with a very simple nine-patch on repeat.
Playing with the squares in the nine-patch creates some interesting shapes. I’ve used half-square triangles to get that overlaid grid effect, but you could even use quarter-square triangles in the centre, and half-square triangles for the other squares, so create a tighter grid pattern overall.
Sunday sketch #86
The last element that I added to Sunday sketch #85 was a wonky star shape that gave a bit of energy and movement to the block. I decided to take that shape and tile it, because… why not?
As soon as I tiled it, I could see other shapes in there – those alternating parallelograms. Colouring the design in reverse makes them more obvious.
These blocks would be fairly easy to make using half-rectangle triangles with a half-square triangle added at one end (to create the sharp points of the 4-pointed stars). Four of those units would be sewn around a central square, staggered using a single partial seam. I like the idea of scrappy stars against a low-volume background – wouldn’t that look great?
