Tagged: half-square triangles
Sunday sketch #377
This week’s sketch features rail-fence-like blocks with square-in-a-square units as the main element. The middle row or column of each block (depending on its orientation) is differentiated from the adjacent columns/rows by switching the colouring of the squares and background. This creates floating rectangular shapes within the design.
Here it is in red and white and in the reverse colourway.
I often like trying a design with a different block layout; in this case, setting the blocks on point. Now instead of running horizontally and vertically, those floating rectangles are sitting diagonally. And the background (or foreground?) grid is now a checkerboard.
Rather than having some of the floating rectangles only half-appearing (on the edges of the design), I’ve removed those ones so that the design has only complete rectangles.
I think from afar, this design can look like a bit of a jumble, until you look more closely and see that there’s some regularity to those floating shapes.
Removing some of the rectangles gives the eye a (little) bit of room to rest, and makes the remaining rectangles more of a feature. This might be something I’d do if I were submitting this design to a modern quilt show.
As the background (or foreground?) checkerboard pattern can be a bit overwhelming, I also tried removing some of it. This gives the eye much more room to rest. Ahhhhh.
This week’s sketch(es) could be made using squares, half-square triangles and quarter-square triangles. Despite describing the main block as including square-in-a-square units, I wouldn’t actually use those units to create this design; simple squares and HSTs/QSTs would be enough.
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!
