Tagged: half-square triangles
Sunday sketch #373
I designed the week’s sketch only a couple of months ago, but I’ve already forgotten what prompted it. The blockiness* and transparency remind me a little of Sunday sketch #246. (*possibly not a real word.)
I think maybe I just liked the colour palette. It kinda gives me the ick but I’m also really drawn to it. I feel like the dark brown squares (where the reddish orange and khaki green overlap) work really well.
I expanded the border a little to let the design breathe a bit; that first version’s very crowded and in-your-face.
I tried to refine the design a little by curving the edges of the ‘flower’ shapes, which introduces lovely new secondary shapes (the orange-peel units in dark brown). The curves of the flower shapes are maybe not quite right – there’s a point at the tip of each petal where two curves meet that’s a bit sharp for me. But I love those orange peels!
The first version of this week’s design could be made using squares, rectangles and half-square triangles set on point. The last version could be made using drunkard’s path units (or quarter-circles), rectangles and orange peels.
I’m mulling over ideas of what to make for submission to QuiltCon 2024 (submissions open on September 1 and close on October 31), but I don’t think this is a contender – the design needs more work. The palette though – that’s definitely on the shortlist! I just need to think up a four-colour design…. 🙂
Sunday sketch #349
A quick, cute design this week, and an excuse to talk about colour placement.
This design is set on point, and just features squares and quarter-circles (or drunkard’s path units). In the version above, the squares are coloured the same as the background, and the curves are in white, yellow, orange (light, medium or dark) or pink.
Even though each row features squares of background colour, they look like they’re two zig-zagging lines twisting round each other – like a double coil of white plus another colour. I’m not sure what optical illusion is at play here; it’s not really a transparency effect, because white plus any of these colours wouldn’t produce that background colour. But somehow the brain just seems to imagine that those squares are connecting the curves on either side to create a long, winding coil.
The design works horizontally too.
And in a more limited palette.
The design doesn’t have the same effect with a different colour placement though. Below I’ve used different placement in each row, and you can see how it changes the whole effect – in some places, the transparency is there but less effective; in other cases, it’s gone completely, leaving quite a clunky design in its wake.
The first row above features a transparency effect: the white and red zig-zags overlap in pink squares, which makes sense. I feel like it’s a bit ‘heavier’ than the second row. The third and fifth rows lose that effect completely, and feel very clunky (and boring) to me. The fourth row retains the zig-saggy feel (for the most part), but using red to colour in the squares where the white and pink ‘overlap’ doesn’t quite work, so feels a bit wrong.
So anyway, if a pattern featured a design like this, I think it would be important to tell people how the overall effect might change with different fabric placement. Something that looks great on paper might end up looking very dodgy in fabric if you weren’t careful.
Of course, the same design can be coloured completely differently, to avoid any of these problems 🙂
These designs could be made into quilts by arranging squares and quarter-circles (or drunkard’s path units) on point. The last version uses half-square triangles instead of squares. All fairly straightforward!
Sunday sketch #346
If I was any good at planning ahead with my quilt designs, I would’ve posted a Valentine’s-related sketch this week, but… I’m not, so I haven’t. Instead, you get the latest in a series of related sketches (check out Sunday sketches #344 and #345 to see where it started).
The original inspiration for this series of sketches was a strip of three triangle-in-a-square units, which I included as part of my first design for Tara Glastonbury’s #quiltfromabrief series that she’s currently doing on her blog and in Make Modern magazine. You can see my design on Instagram – and at the bottom left, that strip of three triangles. It’s not something I’ve used much before (one on its own, definitely, but not three together). Ooh, the possibilities!
So this is the first design in the series where all the triangles are actually coloured in. You can see the similarities with the past two weeks’ sketches – that inner star, surrounded by an octagon, with an outer shell of half-square triangles (and now triangle-in-a-square units). And, of course, with so many elements in the basic block, there are loads of colouring options.
I always like the simplicity of a two-colour design (or three, if you count white), but multiple colours are good too.
And here it is in the same warm palette I’ve used before.
I think this design is quite ‘traditional’ (as opposed to ‘modern’) in a lot of ways, and I can certainly amplify that through colour placement.
Flipping the blue and white gives a somewhat similar look and feel…
Whereas flipping the green and blue produces a transparency effect that really highlights the circular movement around the design. I love this one! It’s one of my favourite versions. But it definitely feels traditional. Not that that’s a bad thing 🙂
A checkerboard background retains a lot of the circular motion, but is getting a bit too busy for me.
I also ‘opened up’ the designs a bit by adding more background colour (white) within each block – changing the corner pieces around the octagon to the background colour creates a square within the block and makes those corner triangle-in-a-square units a bit more obvious.
Funnily enough, I think the two-colour version feels busier than the multicoloured version. I’m not sure why.
I feel like this last version also emphasises those diamonds created by the triangle-in-a-square units between adjacent blocks. I’ll play with those more next week!
