Tagged: drunkard’s path
Sunday sketch #238
I use curves so much more in my designs now than I used to… probably because I feel more comfortable sewing curves now than I did when I started out quilting. This week’s Sunday sketch uses two blocks in an alternating arrangement: one block is all curves, while the other one is all angles (creating a star shape).
In the first iteration of this design, the stars are coloured differently depending on whether they’re in a ‘flower’ (a shape created by 4 half-circles) or between them.
Colouring all the stars the same way brings those shapes more to the foreground….
And reversing the colourway of the stars – by making the arms dark blue, and the centres white – pushes them to the background, and makes the flower shapes more prominent.
Reducing the colour palette, and flipping the colour from the flowers to the stars, changes the design once again. Look at the movement now! Suddenly secondary curves emerge from all those connected star shapes. I love this version.
But wait, there’s more… 🙂
Adding another colour brings more movement. Now it’s like two pieces of lace, one pink and one yellow, overlapping.
How about we remove the white flowers altogether, and just stick with the stars.
Hmm, perhaps that’s a bit busy (although I still love it). Through those last few designs, another shape has emerged: the stars surrounded by a halo of concave curves. Here they are again, in an alternating colourway. Don’t you just love those big curvy curves that emerge from the dark background?
Anyway, let’s add the missing blocks back in (once again in white).
We can minimise the amount of white by colouring only the centre stars of the flowers.
To help connect the two groups of shapes, let’s make the centres of all the stars the same colour: white. This also helps to bring those larger curves – which almost disappeared in the last few iterations – back into view.
From the first iteration to the last (for now) – all the same design, but quite a different look and feel for each one. I’ll share more versions next week. I have loads!
This design is relatively simple: two blocks, arranged in an 11 x 11 checkerboard pattern. One block consists of two semi-circles, facing each other. The other block is a star shape made of 4 kite-in-a-square blocks, with the kite heads made up of a half-square triangle – 4 of which form the centre square of the star. (Does that block have another name…? Probably, but I don’t know what it is.) The only difference between all these designs is which elements are coloured, and how. Which is your favourite?
Sunday sketch #237
Something simple, in a week that’s been anything but.
This design also works in a reverse colourway, with the pinks creating heart shapes that overlap lemons.
This one would be pretty easy to make into a quilt: it’s all squares and drunkard’s path shapes using a consistent background colour.
Sunday sketch #231
You might be able to see the similarities between this week’s Sunday sketch and last week’s. Instead of a central diamond (or square on point) for the pill shape, I’ve just used a circle. Depending on how you look at it (or what colours you use), the circle can look like the shape created by two overlapping pill shapes.
Here I’ve just picked five colours and applied them in a regular pattern.
Paring back the design a little focuses only on those long pill shapes.
In the next two versions, I’ve used the same colour consistently for the shapes running horizontally (pink or yellow) or diagonally (green or pale pink). The centre spots are all the same colour.
But I could also go in the opposite direction and use a random mix of colours and positions. This one’s my favourite!
Of course, the design can also be rotated by 90 degrees so that the shapes run horizontally. Here I’ve limited the centre circles to just two colours, and run them vertically.
Or you could flip the design back so that the shapes are vertical again, but with the colours running diagonal. Don’t these look like lipsticks all lined up? OK, maybe not the yellow ones… 😉
These designs could all be made with drunkard’s path or semi-circle blocks, plus some rectangles and sashing. There’s lots of repetition in these designs, which lends itself well to chain-piecing!
