Category: Sunday sketch
Sunday sketch #289
In Sunday sketch #287, I picked out a particular combination of shapes that I wanted to play with some more. Since then, I’ve spent a bit of time seeing what I could do with them. Not much, as it turns out! 🙂 Well, at least not much that I thought was worth sharing. But I did my usual iteration / modification, and ended up with a bunch of designs that I really like. Here they are!
So, it might not be so obvious at first glance how this design relates to Sunday sketch #287. Below left is the shape that I picked out from that sketch; below right is the modified shape I ended up with. I added one half-square triangle to each side, which changed the angle of the connection between them (diagonal rather than horizontal).
But hang on – that’s not the shape I ended up using in this week’s design! Well, it almost is. Instead of having the two parts touching at just one point, I slid one part along a smidge so that they touch at both points, creating a closed loop. Connecting these loops in slightly inclining rows also creates a series of secondary shapes in the centre – diamonds and elongated diamonds. The loops and diamonds can then be coloured differently, depending on which element you want to emphasise.
You can also take elements away to modify the design yet again.
Or use colour to create different connections between certain shapes. Here, I’ve alternated the colour of the top and bottom of the loops to give the impression of a spiral or a zig-zag. I really like this version! It’s got a lot of energy, I think. Or maybe that’s just the acid yellow, haha!
This week’s designs are all made from half-square triangles and squares. I’m not sure there’d be much advantage in trying to assemble a quilt using blocks; I’d be tempted to just make a bunch of HSTs and squares and then lay them out in rows and columns to sew together. It’s the sort of design that might make you feel like you’re not making much progress until the very end.
Sunday sketch #288
No, your eyes are not deceiving you – this week’s design features prints! I don’t think I’ve ever designed a Sunday sketch using prints before?! But I couldn’t help it this week.
(I probably should’ve posted this one before Christmas, since it’s kinda a festive palette somehow.)
This design is very much like Sunday sketch #224, but using squircles – squares with rounded off corners – instead of circles, and with the internal lines placed off-centre.
Because the lines within the squircle are off-centre, rotating the blocks changes the size and location of the secondary shapes. In the version above, there’s a big square in the centre, surrounded by rectangles and four smaller squares. In the version below, the small square’s in the middle, and the rectangles and four big squares surround it.
Of course, the design also works in solids, too.
The easiest way to make this design into an actual quilt would probably be to combine quarter-circle units with squares and rectangles as necessary. But that would mean three of the four parts of each squircle were made up of multiple pieces of fabric – so you’d get seams between pieces of the same fabric. That’s fine for solids, but not for plaids (which I’ve used in the top version). So I think I’d create templates for those pieces, so you could add a rounded corner to each one. I’m not entirely sure how I’d do that (I don’t think it’d be quite as easy as you might first imagine), so it might be worth me playing around with sometime. I do have some plaids that I need to use up, so this might be the design for them!
Sunday sketch #287
This week’s sketches are iterations of last week’s. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a series of related sketches. Although I’m not sure two posts in a row counts as a series…!
So last week’s sketches were all based around interlocking crosses – a bit like Brigid’s crosses – with alternating blocks having the reverse colouring. Using random colour placement instead produces a design like this:
And then I just started removing bits. I designed the block using flying geese and a square-in-a-square units, which means there are lots of bits that can be subtracted to create new and interesting designs. Here’s the first design again:
And here it is with alternating blocks removed (actually still there, but with only the centre square showing), to add some more negative space and help you see the individual crosses (or what’s left of them):
I also tried a simpler palette, so you can concentrate on the shapes rather than the colours.
This week’s sketch could be made into a quilt using flying geese, squares, square-in-a-square units and rectangles.
This isn’t one that I’ll be rushing to make, but I enjoyed the process of iterating the design and exploring different shapes and palettes. That’s the kind of experimentation that I like doing with the Sunday sketches – often a little shape or combination of shapes will spark a new idea and a new sketch. For example, I really love this little shape, which is repeated and rotated in the above designs:
It feels a bit like fingertips touching (not that I’m comparing my work to that of Michelangelo or anything..!). Anyway, I’ll keep playing with it and see if I can come up with something new. Watch this space!
