Tagged: half-square triangles
Sunday sketch #316
I like playing with tessellations, and this week’s design is the first one I’ve posted in awhile. (Sunday sketches #296 and #297 were the last ones, I think?)
This design is based on a single block, repeated and alternately rotated.
If I colour the blocks slightly differently, you can see where the edges are.
The blocks can also be laid out on point, although I think I prefer the standard layout.
Rotating the blocks in a different way breaks up the tessellation but creates new and interesting secondary shapes.
Or they can all be arranged in the same way, but just coloured in an alternating grid to emphasise the shapes within each one.
As usual, I started with a minimal palette, but the design lends itself to a broader range of colours/fabrics.
This design could be made into a quilt using some pretty basic shapes: half-square triangles, half-rectangle triangles, and flying geese (if you want to save a few seams).
Sunday sketch #314
This is one of my favourite Sunday sketches in a long time. It combines two of my favourite things: a simple yet effective design, and an understated palette that I’ve used before. It feels a little retro, a little modern. I love it.
Colouring the blocks slightly differently introduces horizontal lines and makes it clearer where blocks begin and end.
And then rotating the blocks introduces new shapes and movement.
That last one’s maybe a bit too trippy, but I love the first two designs! Although I can’t decide which I prefer… I like the simplicity of the first one, until I see the second one and realise I like the added horizontal lines… but maybe less is more?! Arrghh. (This indecision is probably the main reason I don’t make more quilts!)
These designs could be made into quilts using quarter- or half-circles (or drunkard’s path units), half-square triangles and rectangles. I love the limited palette of just three colours, but perhaps the design is simple enough that it could work with a broader palette?
Sunday sketch #313
We’re having a chilly winter in Melbourne this year, so I’m already dreaming of spring! This week’s sketch is also a good excuse to use my happy palette of warm yellows, pinks and oranges.
These cute flower blocks are offset by a half-block in each row, which elongates each flower ‘stem’ by extending it into the space between the two blocks beneath.
In the first version, I’ve used the same colouring for all the upper and lower ‘leaves’ in the blocks, with different colours for the flowers. But of course, the leaves can have a mix of colours too.
That’s a bit busy for my liking; here’s a version with all the blocks coloured in the same way. I’m not sure if it’s the limited palette or the darker greens that really help to highlight the repetition in those skinny curves and vertical lines.
Then I tweaked the design of the flowers themselves – this next design’s a bit more like a tulip, I think. This variation also creates a lovely diagonal movement from top left to bottom right, thanks to those new teardrop-shaped red ‘petals’.
This week’s sketch would be tricky, but not impossible, to translate into an actual quilt. It would take a combination of half-square triangles, drunkard’s path blocks, and skinny curved inset strips.
