Sunday sketch #241

What do you think of the 2021 Pantone Color(s) of the Year? (Me? Meh.)

The Pantone Color Institute picked yellow (‘Illuminating’) and grey (‘Ultimate Gray’) for its colours this year. (It’s not the first time they’ve chosen two instead of one; in 2016 they selected baby pink and baby blue (sorry… ‘Rose Quartz’ and ‘Serenity’). Ugh.)

Anyways… I figured I’d try the yellow/grey combo in a design! I’m always on the lookout for new colour combinations. (And the first quilt I ever made was in yellow and grey prints, so I have a soft spot for this palette.)

I’ve been experimenting with block-based designs based on only two blocks – it’s an interesting visual exercise, and a good way to find unexpected secondary shapes.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #241-1

I’m always fascinated by how colouring a design differently can give a quilt pattern a whole new look. But what’s great about this design is that colouring the pieces in the same way, but in a different palette, also produces a different effect. In the version above, the grey diamonds create a ripple effect of concentric (almost) circles. But in the version below, when the colours are switched, the white diamonds don’t have quite the same effect.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #241-2

But this design is also a perfect example of how colouring the pieces differently can create a completely different look and feel. I added another 2 rows and columns of alternating blocks to the design below, but it’s the same checkerboard arrangement of only 2 blocks. It somehow seems a bit more complicated when colours are split between blocks, pulling some together and pushing others apart.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #241-3

And we can complicate things even further…

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #241-4

Look at all that movement! And all of it comes from colour placement; it’s the exact same design as the version before it. I love it!

This design could be made into a quilt quite easily, as it’s just 2 square blocks repeated in an alternating arrangement. One block comprises 2 diamond shapes (or 4 triangle-in-a-square units). The other block is a cross block with a square in the middle, which could be constructed in a number of ways.

 

 

Sunday sketch #240

I don’t often design quilts with lots of long straight lines, because I know how much it would annoy me to make a quilt that needed that level of precision 🙂 I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I try not to set myself challenges that I know will play on my worst characteristics!

But having said that, I’ve long wanted to design a quilt pattern that echoes the branching lines of a phylogenetic tree – the diagram that depicts the evolutionary relationships between living things. I saw one recently for genomic variants of the coronavirus.

So I set myself some rules (some of which I broke), and repeated sets of rectangles to create the feeling of going from large groups to small ones, and then even smaller ones.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #240-1

I actually started with a vertical layout, and a different colour scheme.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #240-2

But that layout didn’t give me enough room for different sized blocks, so I spread out sideways. And I kept it symmetrical, for a change!

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #240-4

I played around with a few colour palettes. I also decided I wanted to add even more blocks of different size, so inserted even larger blocks to the left of the design. This broke one of my rules, which was to use each block size in sets of 4. But I decided I didn’t have room for that approach after all.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #240-3

After playing around with a few palettes, I hit on a design I liked. Then I decided I wanted it to be square(ish), so added another row (of large, medium, small, tiny and teeny blocks) at the top.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #240-5

This design would be very easy to make into an actual quilt – it’s all rectangles, and the different sizes are all multiples of each other (e.g. 1 x 2; 2 x 4; 4 x 8; etc.). The hardest part would probably be counting up how many pieces you’d need of each colour, then keeping them organised after you cut them 🙂

Sunday sketch #239

Last week’s Sunday sketch included 10 versions of a single design, showing how much a pattern can vary by changing only the colour palette or placement. This week’s Sunday sketch continues on that theme using the same design. Here are 10 more variations!

Let’s start with a two-colour quilt design as a palate (palette!) cleanser 🙂

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-1

Just as a reminder of the shapes I’m working with in this design… there are ‘flower’ shapes (shown below in yellow) and the shapes created at their intersections (shown in pink). Both types of shapes have a star in their centre.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-2

Even working with just two colours, there are plenty of ways to vary the design.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-3

The basic versions of the design often let secondary shapes emerge… which I’ve highlighted below in pink. Can you see them in the design above as well?

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-4

Or I can take all the shapes within those secondary ‘circles’, and use the reverse colourway (yellow on dark blue, rather than dark blue on yellow). This is a bit more psychedelic…

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-5

Back to the more regular pattern… I removed the centres of the stars (colouring them in using the colour of the star’s arms). Those secondary patterns are still clearly visible if you get your eye in.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-6

And then I played more with the star shapes… alternating the level of detail…

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-7

…and the colour.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-8

Regular readers know that I often prefer the symmetrical, two-colour versions of my designs. So this next version is one of my favourites. I love how the four corner stars poke out of the overall design.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-9

And the secondary shapes are still there. Highlighted here in white, just for effect.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #239-10

It’s funny how the feel of this design changes, too. Some of the versions feel quite ‘modern’ to me, while others seem much more ‘traditional’. I’ve often struggled to define ‘modern’ when it comes to quilting, and I don’t necessarily agree with some of the definitions out there. (Also, I’ve often thought about setting up two brands to sell the same quilt patterns… one brand to sell the ‘traditional’ version, and the other to sell the ‘modern’ version. I’d love to know the overlap between those two customer bases!)

Anyway, I digress.

Like Sunday sketch #238, this design is just two blocks alternating in an 11 x 11 grid. One block is two half-circles facing each other; the other is an arrangement of 4 kite blocks. The only difference between all these versions is the colours – what they are, and where they go. And I have a million more variations on this design… well, maybe not a million, but certainly another 30 or 40 (at least). The possibilities are almost endless!