Whenever I get an idea but don’t have the time or opportunity to sketch it out in full, I just jot it down in my notepad and come back to it later. (So my notepad is full of scribbles, half-baked ideas and failed attempts!)

I was in Japan recently for work (and a bit of fun) and managed to note down a few ideas. This first one – which I ended up sketching out properly when I got home, before recreating in EQ8 – is based on a motif in a company logo. I was sitting in a meeting in Japan and some of the related paperwork listed companies in my industry… and I had to pull out my Moleskine to sketch a modified version. I don’t think I’m ever not thinking about quilting design.

Here’s the sketch, which took a few attempts to work out (and which I didn’t colour-correct when editing the photo…):

And here’s the recreated – and coloured – version in EQ8:

The overlapping parallelograms lend themselves to some colour play and transparency, so I settled on a single colour in multiple tints and shades (8, I think).

And, of course, the design can be repeated, rotated and reworked in multiple colours:

You don’t need as many as 8 shades to play with transparency; you can get an interesting effect with just 3:

Or go the other way, and use this design as an excuse for a colour explosion:

I just selected these colours fairly randomly in EQ8, but I’ve decided I really love this palette. That acid yellow!!

This design would probably be easiest to make into a quilt pattern using paper piecing or templates. I created rectangular blocks in EQ8 (for ease of repetition), but they ended up splitting some of the bigger triangles lengthways, which I’d probably want to avoid in an actual quilt (not least because it would create points where 6 pieces of fabric meet).