Tagged: drunkard’s path
Sunday sketch #389
This week’s sketch uses one of the blocks from last week: the one featuring four curvy stars. I like how repeating this block creates circles as secondary shapes, which are pulled to the foreground or pushed to the back depending on how the blocks are coloured.
I really like the regular repetition of blocks in a standard layout, but I did experiment a little with a more ‘modern’ version… which basically just meant adding more negative space, introducing some irregularity, and paring down the palette.
I like how there are unfinished circles in these versions, and some flower shapes hidden in there too. The design has some interesting movement. It’s something I could’ve explored further, but I was too caught up in the full layout!
In the next version, I’ve coloured in the centre of the blocks (the circle formed by the curved edges of the four stars), which creates an interesting shape. A bit like a stretched-out animal pelt, without the head 🙂
I also tried adding a new shape in the centre of the block: instead of four curves facing out (to form one side of each of the four stars), I’ve faced them in to create a new star. I really like this version! I like how the rows and columns of background circles are still apparent between the blocks.
You could make any of this week’s sketches into a quilt using quarter-circles or drunkard’s path units. Like last week’s design, if the blocks were 12″, the curves would be 3″ – a manageable size for me (though I find that bigger is always better/easier when it comes to curves!).
Sunday sketch #388
This week’s design came to me in a dream – well, a daydream. That’s not such a big deal, because I spend quite a bit of time daydreaming about quilts and quilt designs 🙂
I’ve been designing a lot with curves lately, and I’ve been trying some block-based designs featuring two alternating blocks. I like there to be some connection between the different blocks, like a common shape or colour (or both). This week, I imagined half-circles in both blocks, but concave in one and convex in the other.
The convex ones are in the flower blocks, and the concave ones are in the star blocks. The two block types also share a central circle within a curvy star inside it. Although that’s not where I started… at first, the two blocks just had circles in the middle.
I didn’t mind that design, but the blocks felt a little empty. The simplest thing to put in those middle circles was another curvy star – repeating some of the existing shapes so the design doesn’t feel too busy or chaotic.
This makes three ‘areas’ per block for colouring in different ways (not counting the background)… the main flower or star shapes, the middle circle, and the centre star. In the previous version, I’ve used the same three colours per block but mixed them around a bit. In the first and last versions I’ve shown here, I’ve coloured one shape consistently across all blocks, for a more cohesive look: in the first version I’ve posted, the middle circles are all in the background colour. In the last version, it’s the centre stars.
I really like the movement in this design, and how the flowers seem to be nestled by the curves in the adjacent blocks. I think the negative space does a lot of work here in creating connections between the blocks.
This week’s sketches are all curves – quarter-circles or half-circles (or lots of drunkard’s path units). If the blocks were 12″ (finished), the curves would be 3″ (finished), which is about the smallest size I can manage well (smaller than that, and my curves get less curvy and more messy!). So the layouts shown here would be ~60″ plus whatever size border you wanted to add. Of course, the advantage of block-based quilts is that they’re usually pretty easy to size up or down.
Some of the shapes in this week’s sketch prompted me to take this design in a different direction, so watch this space for the next few weeks for a few related designs.
Sunday sketch #386
It took me ages to decide which version to show you first today, and I’m still second-guessing myself. I love all of this week’s sketches!
The fundamental design of this week’s sketch is the same as last week’s, but the blocks are set in a standard layout instead of on point. And I’ve changed the colouring to emphasise a different shape – the dark blue shapes that combine to form a lovely curvy four-pointed background to each flower (which in turn combine to create a lovely scalloped edge to the whole design). Can you see them? (In the bottom right image, below, they’re in white instead of dark blue.)
I like this multicolour palette – so bright and happy! – but I prefer the alternating colour/white flowers of the first version, which let your eye rest a bit while maintaining the repetition of the flower blocks.
Different parts of the design can be coloured to move the emphasis around – in the next version, I’ve added another layer of squares to the edges of the design, which I think helps bring them to the foreground.
Similarly, removing other elements helps to emphasise those curvy shapes. Here are a few versions where I’ve eliminated more and more bits.
The design also works with a simpler palette. In both versions below, I’ve used a lighter colour for the background and a darker colour for the squares and diamonds, but I think the reverse would work just as well.
This week’s sketch could be made into a quilt using mostly quarter-circle (or drunkard’s path) units. Some of the versions shown here would also require a small number of squares and/or rectangles.
