I was telling someone recently that I’d never designed with an orange peel shape, cos I’ve also never sewn an orange peel shape, and the next time I sat down to sketch something, guess what shape came up?

It’s maybe not being used in the way that you’d normally expect to see an orange peel, but I think it works. It’s certainly fun in this colour palette (one of my all-time favourites). The checkerboard colouring helps to keep it fun too.

The main block in these designs has the orange peel in the middle, bisected by a straight line that also cuts the square block into two rectangles. But colouring some of the block in the same colour as the background lets the orange peels hang off the edge in some cases, or give a nice curvy edge at the top and bottom.

Here’s a simpler version (same design but less ‘busy’ colouring) – this one might be my favourite.

It works in the other direction too. I feel like those orange peels in the middle are giving me the side-eye 🙂

Here’s a more regular layout, where you might be able to see the basic block more clearly. Placing blocks in the middle of the design and then using one of the block colours as the background helps to ‘float’ the shapes a bit.

I also like colouring the edge blocks so that there are no hard vertical lines showing the outside borders of the block – just the curves of the orange peels undulating down the page.

On looking at the blocks now, I can see hourglass shapes too. I should’ve tried a design that echoed that shape. Here’s one with just a large diagonal instead.

These designs could be made into a quilt using templates of some sort (I’d probably just make my own). Once you got the hang of sewing these curvy shapes (and when I say “you”, I mean “I” 🙂 ), I think the quilt would come together pretty quickly.

I’m going to use these shapes in more designs, so keep an eye out for related sketches next week.