Tagged: squares
Sunday sketch #209
Regular readers know that I’m a sucker for block designs that create secondary shapes when they’re put together. This week’s design features corner curves that combine to create whole circles, plus flying geese that combine to create squares…. all around a standard sawtooth star.
There are really three main elements to this block design: the star, the star surround, and the background. That gives lots of opportunity for different colour combinations (part of me really wants to do the math to see how many, but I won’t 🙂 ). Here’s just the star surround on its own in colour, with the other two elements (star and background) in white:
Or both the star and the star surround in a mixed palette:
I feel like the circles are more prominent when they’re in white – what do you think? I love how the secondary shapes in any design can be brought forward or pushed back, depending on how they’re coloured (alone and in relation to other elements).
I realised recently that I could sorta recreate the look/feel of a scrappy, low-volume background in EQ8 by using some really pale Kona colours. (I always use Kona colours in my EQ8 designs, mostly because Robert Kaufman has the most colours and they’re the easiest fabrics for me to find/buy.)
This next version of the design combines bright, saturated colours for the stars with white surrounds and scrappy, low-volume backgrounds. Maybe this one’s my favourite?!
This design is made from drunkard’s path units, flying geese and squares. That’s it!
Sunday sketch #205
If you follow me on Instagram, you might’ve seen an extra sketch that I shared during the week. It used some of the same blocks from Sunday sketch #204, but arranged in a more symmetrical design. There are so many possible block designs and arrangements along this theme… I could post them for weeks (but I won’t 🙂 ).
I did want to share one or two more though. I decided to limit myself to only the horizontal- and vertical-striped blocks. I love how the lines from one block can extend into the next one (or not).
This is just an 8 x 8 grid using 3 different block designs.
I also like the idea of grouping each block type so that they form distinct areas within the design.
That one’s the same grid size, with an extra block design thrown in.
I like how these designs balance order with a bit of disorder. That last design is probably the closest to one of the original inspirations for this series of designs: a wooden window decoration I spotted while walking along the street in Tokyo last year (hint for walking in Tokyo: always look up!).
As these blocks are all made from strips, squares and rectangles, they could be made using normal piecing. I’d maybe consider foundation paper piecing though, just to get the precision needed for everything to line up nicely.
Sunday sketch #198
I briefly sat down with my sketchbook the other day, drew one simple block, then immediately started up EQ8 to tile it and recolour it. I toyed around with placement too, setting the blocks on point, rotating some of them, and using the inverse colourway on others. I picked a lovely emerald-y green for the two-colour version.
Can you tell what the original block was? If you tilt your head 45 degrees, you might be able to see a few squares emerge from this design. And you can see that they’re made up of two 2:1 half-rectangle triangles (which are twice as high as they are wide). The two diagonal seams of the HRTs are parallel, and the HRTs are coloured so the middle of the block looks like a tilted stripe, with the two coloured triangles on the outside.
Messing with the orientation of the blocks introduces some lovely secondary shapes and lines. Of course, I opted for a symmetrical design!
This design could be translated into a quilt using all HRTs and a few squares of background fabric.
