Tagged: half-circle
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 #380
Recently I created a bunch of designs in response to a specific brief: design a quilt using only circles, squares and rectangles. This week’s sketch is not one of the designs I submitted in response to the brief (for a project that I’ll be able to talk about more soon), but it’s one that I like so I’m sharing it here.
This approach of bisecting circles to create new shapes is one that I’ve used before: see Sunday sketches #224 and #275 (and, kinda related, #288).
This kind of design lends itself to transparency effects. You can also play with the colour palette and placement to emphasise different parts of the design. In the second version below I’ve filled in those empty spaces at the top right and bottom left, although I don’t love this version – it feels too crowded.
Back to a bit of negative space. Just changing one area of the design alters how you perceive those overlaid shapes… on the left, my first impression is of two lighter rectangles and one smaller square laid over those green circles. But on the right, I see two green squares overlapping over white circles.
These designs could be made into a quilt using lots of quarter-circles, half-circles and full circles. I’d probably just make a million quarter-circles rather than trying to wrangle half-circles or full circles, but that’s only because I’ve never made a half-circle or full circle. I know there are ways to do them, but I’ve just never tried them.
I was fortunate enough to have 2 designs selected for this project, which means I need to make 2 quilts by mid-November. Both of which feature lots and lots of circles (which means even more quarter-circles!). One of the designs also plays with transparency using the supplied colour palette, so it will be interesting to see if my design looks as good in fabric as it did on screen.
Sunday sketch #365
You might spot the similarities between this week’s design and last week‘s: the basic block has two circles in diagonally opposite corners that are each highlighted (or shadowed) by a half-circle. But this week, there are no relaxed curves; all the curves are full, half or quarter circles.
I’ve coloured that first version in a way that slightly obscures some of those full circles. Here’s the original, but I just don’t like those areas between 4 adjacent blocks where you get those sharp corners. They make the edges of the blocks a little too obvious, and introduce a hard edge amongst all those lovely soft curves.
An alternative solution is to introduce a third colour for those circles. I don’t mind this idea. (The palette isn’t great, but I ran out of patience while trying to find a three-colour palette that I liked!) Anyway, this one feels even more planetary/celestial. Especially with those interstitial stars!
The same block can be rotated in different ways to make new shapes. These are a smidge too busy for me (hence removing some of the blocks around the edges in the first few versions, and introducing some negative space).
But this next version could be fun in lots of bright colours. A bit like Twister!
I think this week’s sketch could be easier to make into a quilt than last week’s, even though they’re somewhat similar. This one just needs full and half-circles, or lots of half-circles (or lots more quarter-circles). I feel like it’s been awhile since I made a curvy quilt, so maybe I need to put this one on my shortlist!
