Some people have asked me how I come up with so many designs, and this week’s design is a good example of how the process evolves.

I’ve been trying to sketch more block-based designs in recent weeks… it’s not something I’ve done for awhile, but I think they translate better/more easily to published patterns (which is something I’d like to do more).

I tend to fall back on half-square and half-rectangle triangles when sketching – I use these elements much more frequently than squares or rectangles, I think (and definitely more often than circles, which never make an appearance!). I also decided that I wanted something that didn’t read as ‘pretty’ or ‘traditional’, but rather felt ‘quirky’ or even ‘uncomfortable’.

A bit of sketching led me to the general outline of a red-on-white block, which I interspersed with its white-on-red counterpart to create this design.

I like this design, but I wanted to take it a little further. The large centres in each block felt a little too empty for me. I decided to keep the HRT motifs going, filling on those centres with another 4 to create a wonky star shape that adds a bit more energy to the whole design.

Yeah! This is what I was after. The two different block types (red on white, or white on red) could be tiled separately to create some really interesting secondary shapes, but I like mixing them together – it gives the design lots of energy.

These designs are all 2:1 half-rectangle triangles (which are twice as long as they are wide (or twice as wide as they are long, depending on which way you’re looking at them!)). Because they’re slightly offset, you’d need to use a few partial seams to put everything together. I still haven’t mastered HRTs (I still seem to waste too much fabric when I’m trimming), but once I do, this one’s at the top of my list!