Category: Sunday sketch

Sunday sketch #306

This week’s sketch has made me realise that I don’t design with flying geese nearly enough!

I started with alternating blocks of half-square triangles and double flying geese. The great thing about pairing these two units is that the two triangles share the same 45-degree angle, so they fit well together.

I actually started with the repetitive elements covering the entire design.

I like this design on its own, but you know I can never stop iterating….

So I removed some of the shapes at the bottom, to introduce some negative space and reinforce the sense that those elongated vertical parallelograms are the main shape in the design (created by a double flying geese unit flanked by two half-square triangles).

Here’s the first version in another colourway:

I don’t like this one as much; I like the dark blue flying geese in the first one! OK then, back to a blue background. Here I’ve removed shapes from the side (or added borders, depending on your perspective).

I also liked the idea of removing any of those white-on-blue flying geese that ended up ‘floating’ against the background when other blocks were removed. I feel like this version shows that gridwork of ‘overlapping’ vertical and diagonal lines more clearly.

There are so many potential variations on this design, depending on what you keep and what you remove.

I’m not always so careful with how I colour things, but in this case I like how the diagonal lines of flying geese alternate white and blue, as does each column and row of flying geese. The design feels very balanced as a result.

These designs can be made into quilts using half-square triangles and flying geese, plus some borders (where necessary). There are only a few colourways for each type of block/unit, so it would be a chain-piecing dream.

I’m actually in the process of making a quilt based on this design, and I can confirm that it’s coming together quickly! Hopefully it’ll look as good in fabric as it does on the screen.

 

Sunday sketch #305

After three weeks of curves, it’s back to angles and straight lines for this Sunday’s sketch.

Using only the blocks with coloured outlines could make the design feel a bit cluttered, but the consistency of the white centres helps to relieve the busy-ness (a bit).

And, of course, the blocks can be rotated to create star shapes behind that lattice of horizontal and vertical borders.

Paring back the palette helps to focus the eye on the different angles at play – horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines criss-crossing the design.

And to take the design in another direction entirely, I coloured adjacent blocks in a similar way, to create stacked bricks with different internal motifs.

I prefer the first few (brightly coloured) versions, but I like sharing the others in case it sparks a fellow quilter’s creativity!

These designs can be made using half-rectangle triangles, 2:1 rectangles, and longer rectangles or strips for the block’s borders. A very straightforward design that could be made easily into an actual quilt!

 

 

Sunday sketch #304

The last version of Sunday sketch #303 led me straight to the first version of Sunday sketch #304.

I took those undulating step-and-curve shapes, which look a bit like a cross between a clamshell and a Devo hat, and tiled them across the design.

As always with two-colour designs, I have to show the inverse colourway. (In one of my favourite palettes of Kona Gotham Grey and Seascape… I’m not sure how well they work together in real life, but I love how they look on my screen in Electric Quilt.)

Now, I’ve coloured those elements so they appear in the foreground, but they can also be coloured so that they appear in the background. That brings a different shape – the ones formed in-between – to the foreground. This is just making use of negative space.

I then introduced a new shape. Previously, each block was a circle that had two opposing quadrants replaced by a 9-patch. In the next versions, I replaced one of those 9-patches with two small concave drunkard’s path units. They combine to create a convex, curvy fleur-de-lis-like shape (for lack of a better description).

Isn’t that so pretty?

And again, I can flip the negative space so that the shapes are now created in the background instead of the foreground.

I love the combination of curves and sharp edges, but I wanted to try those curves on their own, too.

What a lovely outcome! The small curves bump along like clouds across the page, while the larger curves swoop up and down. I am smitten with this design. (Eagle eyes may notice that I used the wrong blue on the first of those two designs, but I was too lazy to redo it in Seascape!)

The thing I like about switching up the negative space is that it always takes me a minute to ‘find’ the shapes… in the first version below, I focus on the blue first, then my eyes finally find the black shapes. And in the second version, my eyes settle on the black shapes before seeing the blue ones. It feels like a secret being revealed.

Last week’s and this week’s designs show how easy it is to take one main shape and iterate through a bunch of related designs, ending up with something that looks nothing like the original (compare the last design this week with the first design last week). That’s probably my favourite part of quilt designing.

This week’s designs are made from quarter-circle (drunkard’s path) units and 9-patches, or just quarter-circles (large and small). I think all of the designs shown here are 8 x 8 layouts, so blocks of 8″ (finished) would make a 64″ square quilt. That means the smallest curves would be 4″ (finished), which isn’t too bad (at least, not for me). Or you could size up and do 9″ and 4.5″ curves (which would also make the calculations easier if you were making the version with the 9-patches, which could then be 9″ square (finished) as well). Which is basically a long-winded way of saying that even though the curvy design looks somewhat delicate, the curves don’t have to be super-small or finicky.

I also used curved corners on these designs; I felt like they just worked better. I’m determined to make a curvy-cornered quilt one of these days!