Category: Sunday sketch
Sunday sketch #85
Some people have asked me how I come up with so many designs, and this week’s design is a good example of how the process evolves.
I’ve been trying to sketch more block-based designs in recent weeks… it’s not something I’ve done for awhile, but I think they translate better/more easily to published patterns (which is something I’d like to do more).
I tend to fall back on half-square and half-rectangle triangles when sketching – I use these elements much more frequently than squares or rectangles, I think (and definitely more often than circles, which never make an appearance!). I also decided that I wanted something that didn’t read as ‘pretty’ or ‘traditional’, but rather felt ‘quirky’ or even ‘uncomfortable’.
A bit of sketching led me to the general outline of a red-on-white block, which I interspersed with its white-on-red counterpart to create this design.
I like this design, but I wanted to take it a little further. The large centres in each block felt a little too empty for me. I decided to keep the HRT motifs going, filling on those centres with another 4 to create a wonky star shape that adds a bit more energy to the whole design.
Yeah! This is what I was after. The two different block types (red on white, or white on red) could be tiled separately to create some really interesting secondary shapes, but I like mixing them together – it gives the design lots of energy.
These designs are all 2:1 half-rectangle triangles (which are twice as long as they are wide (or twice as wide as they are long, depending on which way you’re looking at them!)). Because they’re slightly offset, you’d need to use a few partial seams to put everything together. I still haven’t mastered HRTs (I still seem to waste too much fabric when I’m trimming), but once I do, this one’s at the top of my list!
Sunday sketch #84
I’ve been playing around with more block-based designs lately – which you’ll see over the next few weeks.
This week’s quilt design is a supersized block based on half-square triangles (with the occasional flying geese). Simple, but striking.
This design could be made into a pattern using all half-square triangles (or HSTs and flying geese, if you can cope with one partial seam per block). You could use the centre squares to highlight fussy-cut fabrics or another smaller block, but I quite like the idea of leaving them ‘blank’ to showcase the design itself (and/or your quilting).
Sunday sketch #83
If you look closely at Sunday sketch #81, you can see that the inside halves of each arrow create a closed octagon in the centre of each block. I decided to take that part of the block (which kinda looks like a circular saw blade) and tile it on its own.
Of course, that tiling brings up some really interesting secondary shapes: octagons, zig-saggy diamonds, and some wonky 8-pointed stars. It can be easier to see them if I redo the sketch with reverse shading.
I think when I sketch by hand that I pay more attention to the shapes, and see more possibilities for alternative designs and colours than I would when I use Excel or Illustrator. Instead of just creating one block and cutting-and-pasting it to get repeats, I’m re-drawing it again and again, which gives me time to think about each line and how I might manipulate it to get something new.
This design could be made into a quilt pattern using half-square triangles and squares.
