Tagged: half-rectangle triangles
Sunday sketch #158
If I could only ever design using one shape, I’d have to choose the half-square triangle. I just love it. Whenever I’m sketching aimlessly with no fixed idea in mind, I almost always start with some HSTs. They’re a bit edgy, but a bit tame; totally basic, yet versatile enough to lend themselves to some really sophisticated designs.
Recently, I sketched this idea…
It’s no great shakes, right? Not terribly interesting in black and white, but I decided to recreate it in Electric Quilt 8 to see if some colour would perk it up a bit. Well…
It’s funny what a pop of colour can do! I wasn’t overly inspired by this design on paper, but I really love it mocked up in a bright, fun colour palette.
It also works in monochrome, too… I cropped it slightly, so that it’s almost square and more symmetrical.
It’s not so clear, with the white background of the design against the white background of this page, but the half-kite shapes (made up of one HST and one half-rectangle triangle) on the sides balance each other out nicely. I reckon a contrasting binding (red against the white shapes; white against the red shapes) would look pretty cool on this one.
This design would be super-easy to make in monochrome, as each 2×3 block is made from 4 HSTs and 1 HRT. There’s an even number of blocks and half blocks, so you could use the 4-at-a-time HST method (or even 8-at-a-time!) and chain-piece your way to a finished quilt top in no time.
The multicoloured method would take a bit more planning, but nothing too difficult. Just a little bit of patience and a lot of coloured pencils 🙂
Sunday sketch #145
A few weeks ago, I mentioned how much I like playing around with basic shapes like squares and triangles. Here’s another design along the same lines (pun intended!).
This one emerged from Sunday sketch #143. Sometimes when I’m redrawing a design – so that I can make minor design tweaks or recolour it – I’ll pick out certain shapes (like those central white and green squares) and draw them first, then connect them by drawing all the intervening lines. It’s a methodical and intentional approach that tends to lead to fewer mistakes.
But often, once I’ve drawn the beginning shapes, I veer off in another direction and create a new design. So even though this week’s design is related to #143… the similarities may not be so obvious.
Like many of my recent designs, this one would probably be easiest to convert to a quilt pattern by treating it as a collection of smaller units (half-square triangles and half-rectangle triangles) rather than whole blocks. It’s on point, but not offset by 45 degrees; but you could make it and trim it down to a square easily enough.
Sunday sketch #129
Back to EQ8 this week. You know I love a repetitive, block-based pattern!
This design is just squares and half-rectangle triangles. The HRTs are 3:1 – three times as long as they are wide. If I were to make these, I’d use a Bloc-Loc ruler or maybe even design a paper-piecing template to create the whole block. I like my points to be super-precise!
I’ve played with this design a lot in EQ8, and coloured it in a million ways – many of which look like completely different designs. I’ll show some on Instagram during the week.
I’m really tempted to make this design into a quilt – I just love it! And it’s probably time I tackled 3:1 HRTs.
