Tagged: drunkard’s path
Sunday sketch #390
This week’s sketch is much like last week’s, but I’ve changed the size of the main shapes in the block. Instead of all the curves being the same dimensions, I’ve upsized some and downsized others. As a result, the blocks have gone from 16-patches to 9-patches.
The rows and columns of secondary shapes are still there, but the circles are now a mix of small and large. The block has a circle in the middle, and then half- or quarter-circles around the edges that combine with those of adjacent blocks to make more circles.
That introduces lots of colouring options. Here, I’ve coloured the centre circles in a consistent colour (white) across all blocks, or just coloured them in the same as the block colour. In the first case, my eye’s drawn to the white circles, whereas in the second case, I see the dark blue circles first.
Here’s the design with a lighter background.
With a simpler palette, you can just alternate colours…
…or use colour to emphasise the edges of the blocks.
The design even works in a two-colour palette, although I feel like the focus becomes the blocks rather than the circles between them. It just goes to show the effect that colour choice and placement can have on a quilt design.
This week’s sketch could be made into a quilt using quarter-circles (or drunkard’s path units), half-circles and full circles. I’ve never actually pieced a half-circle or a full circle… I always just use quarter-circles to make up larger shapes. It might be nice to have fewer seams though, so maybe I need to practice them. I even have Clammy templates for cutting half-circles and full circles, so I have no excuse!
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.
