Regular readers know that I’m a sucker for block designs that create secondary shapes when they’re put together. This week’s design features corner curves that combine to create whole circles, plus flying geese that combine to create squares…. all around a standard sawtooth star.

There are really three main elements to this block design: the star, the star surround, and the background. That gives lots of opportunity for different colour combinations (part of me really wants to do the math to see how many, but I won’t 🙂 ). Here’s just the star surround on its own in colour, with the other two elements (star and background) in white:

Or both the star and the star surround in a mixed palette:

I feel like the circles are more prominent when they’re in white – what do you think? I love how the secondary shapes in any design can be brought forward or pushed back, depending on how they’re coloured (alone and in relation to other elements).

I realised recently that I could sorta recreate the look/feel of a scrappy, low-volume background in EQ8 by using some really pale Kona colours. (I always use Kona colours in my EQ8 designs, mostly because Robert Kaufman has the most colours and they’re the easiest fabrics for me to find/buy.)

This next version of the design combines bright, saturated colours for the stars with white surrounds and scrappy, low-volume backgrounds. Maybe this one’s my favourite?!

This design is made from drunkard’s path units, flying geese and squares. That’s it!