Tagged: strips

Sunday sketch #335

More Excel designs this week. I wish I’d used a different colour in these designs – this blue feels too cold to me – but I’m too lazy to change it. (There’s probably a quick way to do a replace-all of coloured cells in Excel, but I’m too lazy to find it!)

I like this offset cross that appears in the centre of the design as a result of a series of corners lining up diagonally in all four quadrants. I guess the four quadrants of the design could be made using large log cabin blocks. The strips can be extended to the edge of the design too…

…or angled round more corners to create discrete rectangles. Now there are four more crosses in addition to the centre one.

There are other ways to play with that central cross. If you look closely at the next design, you can see that it’s a series of closed loops of varying length, connected to one another in pairs (apart from the four smaller rectangles floating at the far corners).

Or it can be simplified further – again retaining that central offset cross.

Like last week’s sketch, this week’s designs could be made into a quilt using long strips. I’d find it easiest to make up templates, and maybe even to use paper-piecing to get the strips sewn nice and straight.

Doing one of the simpler designs as a super-sized quilt would look great, I think. I’ll add it to my list… 🙂

Sunday sketch #334

I’ve been playing with Excel a bit lately. It’s a fast and easy way to create quilt designs that feature squares or strips. I just set the sizing of the rows and columns so that the cells are square, then fill the cells to create the shapes.

For whatever reason, I haven’t designed with other shapes much lately. I’ve been busy with quilty deadlines and work and life, and just haven’t made much time for intentional creativity. I’m not worried; I’ll get back to it. But for now, and maybe another week or two, the Sunday sketches might be a bit simpler. But no less interesting!

This is almost like a cross between Frequency (which Modern Patchwork magazine called Sound Maze) and Sunday sketch #194. Notice how the three columns are made from completely separate lines that don’t extend outside their own column? There are a few floating rectangles in the middle column too.

I kept playing with this concept, but decided to colour in some of the whitespace…

You can see that I changed a few things in the middle column in that one, too. I kinda like the balance in this one, but my eye can get a little lost in all those lines.

So I kept playing, and found a simpler variation. Again, the rows might look like they’re interacting, but they’re each made of a completely separate continuous line.

My Excel workbook has another 10 or so sheets in it with additional variations on this theme; it really does have endless possibilities. I’m not sure if I’d ever make one of these designs into a quilt – I find it difficult to piece long narrow strips and keep them all straight. But you never know!

Sunday sketch #305

After three weeks of curves, it’s back to angles and straight lines for this Sunday’s sketch.

Using only the blocks with coloured outlines could make the design feel a bit cluttered, but the consistency of the white centres helps to relieve the busy-ness (a bit).

And, of course, the blocks can be rotated to create star shapes behind that lattice of horizontal and vertical borders.

Paring back the palette helps to focus the eye on the different angles at play – horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines criss-crossing the design.

And to take the design in another direction entirely, I coloured adjacent blocks in a similar way, to create stacked bricks with different internal motifs.

I prefer the first few (brightly coloured) versions, but I like sharing the others in case it sparks a fellow quilter’s creativity!

These designs can be made using half-rectangle triangles, 2:1 rectangles, and longer rectangles or strips for the block’s borders. A very straightforward design that could be made easily into an actual quilt!