I love using an alternating palette (usually of only two colours) on a regular repeating pattern to give the impression that some blocks are sinking into the background while others are coming to the foreground.

In this week’s sketches, each main ‘cross’ shape is made up of one block, with the outermost edges created by adjacent blocks.

The problem with a two-colour palette is that I can never decide which version I like best….

This kind of design has sooo much potential for different block placement. I tend to start with the blocks in the centre, often surrounded by a wide border (like in the above two images). When I’m happy with that version, I’ll try other versions by adding or removing blocks or borders.

With this sketch, I actually started with a multi-colour palette of my usual warm pinks, oranges and yellows. These colours always work well with a white background or a darker one (like the dark blue shown here). I like using wide borders in my sketches to frame the design a little, but of course you needn’t do that when making a quilt. I know some quilters hate dealing with things like sashing and borders.

 

These blocks also work well when set on point (i.e. on a diagonal grid). The lines within each block end up stretching horizontally and vertically instead of diagonally.

I removed the corner blocks in the above two designs, just to add some negative space. But you can fill out the whole grid if you want.

Or mix up the palette and placement…

And use whatever colours you want!

I originally designed the block using a square-in-a-square unit, a bunch of flying geese, and some half-square triangles. But seeing the block set on point, I realise it would probably be easier to make a quilt from this design using squares and rectangles that are assembled into rows or columns –rather than making complete blocks that are then sewn together.

Experimenting with a fairly basic block on repeat produced what I’m calling a ‘modern plaid’ this week…

Can you see the individual blocks? This is a 6 x 6 layout, if that helps. Here are the same blocks rotated…

And rotated again and again…

The blocks are coloured using a palette of four colours. This produces lots of variations when the blocks are rotated…parts of adjacent blocks intersect to create new secondary shapes.

I could do the math to tell you how many variations there are, but… let’s just say there are lots.

This week’s designs could be made into quilts using just squares and rectangles. The basic block is a 16-patch made up of four 4-patches. The outer corners are large squares; the inner corners are small squares; and the remaining ‘patches’ are rectangles.

There are so many design variations and colour combinations that you could recreate this design again and again and never make the same quilt twice.