Tagged: double drunkard’s path
Sunday sketch #491
I made a quilt recently (which I’ll share in a few weeks’ time) that used loads of wide curves – the same size/shape that I used in my quilts Blue Wave, Whirlwind and Quattro. Basically a 7″ (finished) drunkard’s path unit with a 3.5″ (finished) drunkard’s path cut out of it. A bit like a macaroni! It’s such a great shape, and so easy to piece thanks to drunkard’s path templates from Papper, Sax, Sten.
Sunday sketch #177
More curves this week. Does this leaf motif have a name? It’s a fairly common/popular shape, but I’ve tried to introduce some minor variations to keep it interesting.
The design started off a little simpler, using leaf shapes separated by sashing to avoid bulk (below, left). There’s something about this retro design that I really love, but it’s pretty basic. It reminds me of 70s wallpaper.
Each leaf shape is made from double drunkard’s path blocks and a few rectangles, which offer up some interesting opportunities for playing with colour and design (below, right).
Suddenly the leaf shapes aren’t so prominent, and those collections of rectangles take on their own identity. The next step was to modify those rectangles to become flying geese or half-square triangles, for something a little different.
Funnily enough, though, this version looked a little familiar….
Before I post a design to the Sunday sketch series, I often search my Pinterest boards to make sure it’s not something that someone else has already created. In this case, I soon realised that my design – particular the last version shown here, with the ends of the leaves filled in – is quite similar to the Trellis quilt pattern from Heather Black (Quilt-achusetts). Heather’s pattern used different coloured fabrics to emphasise the double drunkard’s paths and the rectangles at the ends, and she added a (green) square inside the leaf shapes. She also arranged the blocks in a slightly different way, using negative space at the top left and bottom right of the quilt top.
In my design (particularly the first one, at the top of this page), I think the sashing and other spacing between the blocks gives the whole design a lighter feel. The consistent colouring also emphasises different features within the design.
Quilting’s all about joining shapes formed by arcs and lines, and there’s only so many ways you can combine circles and rectangles to create new designs. Similarities are inevitable, but I won’t post a design if I feel like it’s too close to something else out there. In this case, I feel like the differences outweigh the similarities. What do you think?
Sunday sketch #149
I bought a double drunkard’s template from Jenny Haynes (Papper, Sax, Sten) awhile back, and I really loved using it to create ‘Blue Wave‘. I keep thinking that I need to design more quilts with that curved motif. And of course, I’m always trying to find new ways to use half-square triangles.
I designed a 2 x 2 block in EQ8: two curves diagonally across from each other, and the other two squares comprising a rectangle and two half-square triangles. There are a million ways you can arrange and colour these blocks, but I settled on a 4 x 4 layout in which the blocks are rotated and feature only 3 colours.
But I also like the look of fewer blocks, all facing the same way.
I’m tempted to tweak this design slightly to remove the bottom-right corner (in hot pink), so that a quilt made from this design would have two square corners and two rounded corners. That’s not something I’ve seen very often (or at all?), but I think it would look pretty cool.
These designs could be made using Jenny Haynes’ double drunkard’s templates (or your own version), rectangles and half-square triangles.
