Tagged: half-rectangle triangles

Sunday sketch #322

A forest of half-rectangle triangles this week.

In designs with repeated blocks or shapes, I often like to colour at least one element consistently across all blocks. It helps to reduce busy-ness in the design and gives the eye somewhere to rest. That explains the dark blue corners of the large HRTs in the design above.

Below, I’ve just gone with the same colour in each HRT. Because of the simplicity of the shapes and the limited palette, this version’s not too overwhelming (for me, at least!).

Different layouts can take advantage of the angle of the 2:1 HRT (which is twice as high as it is wide).

And, of course, there’s always the reverse colourway.

This week’s designs all use half-rectangle triangles (HRTs) and rectangles. Each large HRT is made up of three smaller HRTs (two with the main colour and background colour, and one with the main colour and corner colour). If I were making this, I’d probably change the colour palette and placement to give me an even number of large HRTs of each colour… then I could use the two-at-a-time method for the most efficient / least wasteful HRT construction.

Sunday sketch #320

There are so many lines in this week’s block that pretty much any layout creates lots of secondary lines, interactions and shapes. I like this crazy layout the most; it seems a bit random, but there’s order in the chaos.

Here’s the same block in a different layout; the top rows of the two designs are the same, but from then on, the blocks are rotated differently. In this version, the spaces between the black and white shapes almost end up looking like they’re slightly different shades of light blue, depending on which diagonal line of blocks you’re looking at.

My eye tends to see the diagonal lines of blocks going from top left to bottom right, but there are also lines going from bottom left to top right. They’re maybe a bit easier to see with the blocks in a single colour.

Using the reverse colourway in alternate blocks presents even more opportunities for different layouts.

Things can get pretty busy though….

Pointing all the blocks in the same direction helps to show the effect of alternating the placement of the two colours in adjacent blocks.

The angles in this block make it a great candidate for laying out on point. I feel like this layout changes the whole feeling of the design. (This particular version also has a diagonal grid of squares that isn’t so evident in other versions, thanks to the way I’ve coloured the shapes.)

This next version feels a bit more spiky than its standard-layout sister design. (Why is that?)

A hybrid of the previous two designs retains that diagonal grid of secondary squares (now bigger), plus the spikiness.

Many of these designs make me think of birds, so I couldn’t resist making one last version with a flock flying west.

These blocks, and all these designs, could be made into quilts using 2:1 half-rectangle triangles (twice as long as they are wide), half-square triangles and squares. There are 4 HSTs per block, so 4-at-a-time or 8-at-a-time methods would help to save time. There are also 2 HRTs of each orientation (left-facing and right-facing) in each block, so the 2-at-a-time method for making those would be perfect too.

 

 

Sunday sketch #319

This week’s design is a little bit related to Sunday sketch #313, although with lots of differences too. I guess they’re related more in concept than in execution.

The design features a square block, set on point, in a standard layout. The blocks are made mostly from half-rectangle triangles, with two half-square triangles and a single quarter-circle (or drunkard’s path unit). That first colouring, above, makes me think of cactus flowers. The ones below are more like wheat stalks.

Note that the first three versions have sashing between the blocks; the version below doesn’t. There’s enough whitespace in the blocks themselves to not let the design feel too busy, although I think I still prefer the versions with sashing. I do like a lot of ‘resting’ space in designs though.

The previous versions have coloured all the blocks the same, but of course you could use a different colour per block. And I’ve used gradating colours within each block, but that’s not necessary either. I avoided trying that though (see comment on busy-ness, above!).

This week’s design could be made into a quilt using half-rectangle triangles of different sizes/ratios, squares, half-square triangles, and quarter-circle (drunkard’s path) units.

I think this is the sort of block that you could mix in with other flower blocks for a more random garden-y feel. The same block on repeat is maybe too much for a whole quilt? But it would work well to break up other botanical blocks. I guess I need to design a bunch of flower blocks to test that out! 🙂