Tagged: orange peel

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 #359

This week’s sketch(es) remind me a little of Sunday sketch #296 – they’re both tessellations of a curvy shape with a star in the middle.

Whereas Sunday sketch #296 relied mostly on half-circles, this week’s shape uses quarter-circles or drunkard’s path units. Here I’ve used palette of three colours.

But two also works….

Or more than two. (With a busier palette, I often like to use one colour for a single element of all the blocks for a bit of consistency: here I’ve used white.)

You can get a better idea of the basic building block from this next version, where I’ve used a single colour (plus background colour) per block. The ‘reverse’ tessellated shapes (the ones that are mostly background colour) are made from the corner elements of 4 adjacent blocks.

This week’s designs use a 4 × 4 block in a standard layout, and each block is made up of quarter-circle/drunkard’s path units, plus a few orange peel units. The precise number would depend on your preferred layout, of course.

This is by no means a completely original shape; I’m sure it’s out there already in quilt land. I haven’t saved anything like it on my Pinterest board of curvy quilts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there. If you know of a quilt pattern based on this shape, let me know and I’ll update this post!