Tagged: paper piecing

Sunday sketch #312

This week’s design is the logical progression from last week’s: the same zig-zagging motif, but without the curves.

It works in the other orientation too.

That second version’s quite busy; I think perhaps a 4 x 6 layout of blocks (rather than the 6 x 8 layout I’ve used here) would be better – that would allow the zig-zaggy design to have impact without being overwhelming. The wide borders help to rest the eye, too.

This design would be easiest to make into a quilt using paper piecing. The internal shapes are not quite half-rectangle triangles, although the block could probably be tweaked to make them proper HRTs, which would then allow you to use standard piecing. Otherwise, each block would require two identical (triangle-shaped) templates. As there are only two colours per block, it would be pretty straightforward to make. It’s a bit reminiscent of Northern Lights, which was based on Sunday sketch #124, though that one was a bit more complicated.

Sunday sketch #311

Combining two motifs today – a curve and some sharp points.

This week’s designs started with a simple block: a circle with some internal zig-zags (similar to two adjacent half-rectangle triangle units). Here’s some alternative layouts and colourings so it’s clearer to see what I started with.

There are some interesting internal shapes in there, which you can see if you get your eye in.

I used colouring to emphasise only one side of the circle in the first design. It also works in a vertical orientation too.

This week’s designs would probably be easiest to make using paper piecing. I’d do the zig-zags first, then cut them out in a circle shape and piece that into a larger outer piece. Maybe a bit pesky, but do-able. Which is not to say that I have any plans to do it… 🙂

Sunday sketch #298

The whole point of my Sunday sketch series is to show quilt designs, so there’s an unspoken rule (at least in my head) that all the designs should be makeable. I’ve said before that the skills required to make a particular sketch into a quilt tend to match my own sewing skills at the time I made the sketch. In other words, my ‘design’ brain is pretty aligned with my ‘making’ brain. That’s why I didn’t really design with curves until I could sew a curve, and I haven’t designed with (m)any Y-seams because I haven’t yet sewn a Y-seam. (Not that anything’s stopping me! I just haven’t got around to it yet.)

Anyway, all this is to say that occasionally, there are exceptions. I’m pretty sure that this week’s Sunday sketch is makeable – I think you could use paper piecing, start with a few partial seams, and then sew all the pieces in each block a clockwise manner around the central square, finishing off by completing the original partial seams.

I’m not excited enough by this design to bother checking whether that construction method is indeed possible (or desirable). But I can still share all the iterations!

This Sunday sketch is a block-based design using multiple half-rectangle triangles. They’re joined to each other primarily by their diagonal angles rather than their short or long edges. There are three ‘sets’ of HRTs within each block; in the top design, two of the sets are in colour and one is in white. Here’s each set coloured differently:

That can get a bit busy, so I feel like it helps to have one colour that ties all the blocks together (in this case, white) and other colours that appear more than once.

The design can also use a much simpler palette too.

Or you could use an expanded palette but stick to one colour per block (as in the first version). Here it is again, using a white background instead of the dark blue.

I’d use paper piecing to make these blocks, because I feel like the potential for wonkiness would otherwise be too high – sewing a bunch of triangles along their bias edges would be a recipe for disaster (at least for me). I’ve never tried paper piecing with partial seams though. Is that possible? I feel like it should be. It might be easier with freezer paper piecing than with traditional paper piecing. Hmm… now I want to try it!