Symmetry Saturday – More New Block Layouts
Last weekend I introduced you to a new tile/block layout. So I thought I would continue playing with that tile to see what I could come up with. Here are 3 new layouts: This first one was done by mirroring every other tile. This one was made from the layout above, but I rotated every other tile (the ones which were not mirrored). This one was made by rotating alternate rows. Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – Playing with New Blocks
I’ve been playing with Raymond’s tile system, and continuing to come up with new tiles to play with. This tile is one of my more recent discoveries: And I’ve been playing with block layouts and colorization. This series is an example of using my new tile to come up with different quilts. The layout is the same but the colors are different. Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – On Point
I am preparing to leave on a trip to Switzerland and Paris, and admittedly not doing a very good job of it. I need to be packing, running errands, cleaning out the fridge, and finding someone to watch the house. However, I can’t do any of those things until I do Symmetry Saturday! One of my fellow Symmetry buddies Greg B. asked me a while back if I’d thought about turning the tiles on point and experimenting with them that way. Indeed, I have been doing just that! So I wanted to share a couple of on-point designs with you this week. Next week will be on auto-pilot to a certain degree, but I’ll be thinking about you in gay Paree! Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – Experimenting with Glide Reflection
As I was working on last week’s SS installment, I was getting really excited at the possibilities with reflection. To be honest, I got a little bit carried away… and I was playing & turning & flipping the tiles so much that I actually stumbled into Glide Reflection. It’s a good thing that I had Raymond’s book as a reference, or I would have showed you this “discovery” as an example of Reflection, which would have only been partially correct. Actually, I have probably been demonstrating Glide Reflection in some of my previous lessons as well, but it is probably a bit easier to see if I point out specific examples. Glide Reflection is basically imagining that there is a mirror line, either vertically or horizontally, that enables you to reflect & translate at the same time. The easiest way for me to remember it is that if I cannot easily describe it as a simple rotation, reflection, or translation… it’s probably a glide reflection!! So recall this block from last week: If I were to perform a glide reflection on this, I would take the bottom two rows and flip them upside down, like so: For me to continue repeating this pattern, I can take all four tiles in this orientation, and when I want to copy more blocks, I would slide them in this orientation to the left or below: The block itself is a glide reflection of a single tile, but now that it is glide reflected, I am simply creating translations (or exact copies) of the entire block. My standard mantra is… just because it is a block copy, doesn’t mean you have to color it that way! Here are a few colorings I made from this same block orientation demonstrating glide reflection: Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – Experimenting with Reflection
This week’s focus is on reflection. You encounter reflection every day in life whenever you look as a mirror – you see your image reflected back at you! Imagine that you had the tile pattern printed on 2 pieces of glass, so that you could see the lines through both sides of the glass. If you looked through the front of the glass, you would see the image in its regular state; if you looked through the back of the glass, you would see the mirror image. If you laid those two tiles side by side, one with the front side up, and the other with the back side up, that is mirroring. If I do that with Raymond’s tiles in a four patch, here is what I get: (In Raymond’s tile notation, this would be a 1-1M-1-1M). Essentially, the right tiles are a reflection of the left. So I expanded this to a larger set of blocks, did some coloring, and got this: For some reason, I felt like using some southwestern colors, but I also repeated this in a bold black, white, and red: Same pattern, but completely different feeling! Remember also that you can combine techniques, and you get to decide which way is “up” on your tiles. So I decided to rotate the tile to position 2, and then perform a reflection: (This is known as 2-2M-2-2M). But I didn’t stop there. As I expanded the pattern into another set of 4-patches, I reversed the order (so the next set is 2M-2-2M-2). After coloring in, this is the pattern I came up with: If you haven’t realized by now, this system is extremely versatile and amazingly varied! Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – Experimenting with Translation
Last week, I skipped right to rotation, but seriously – if I’m going back to basics, I should talk a little bit about translation. Translation is a very simple concept – it just means that you copy a block, and no matter where you place it, it is in the same orientation everywhere you put it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the block will have the same coloration, although it can. Sometimes abstract blocks that carry the same colors in the same places can be extremely appealing, but it does have its limitations – especially with translation. You actually saw translation in last week’s post with this image: Just to drive home the point, here is an example where the blocks were colored in first, and then laid out:It still makes for a pretty cool quilt pattern – and with different colors you could make this same quilt over and over & it would have a different feel.When you perform a translation, you get to decide “which way is up.” Now, with Raymond’s tiles, he has numbered them for you, but don’t equate the “1″ in the corner with that meaning the correct position of the tile. There is no “correct” way – it’s whatever way you choose. The numbers are just a way for you to have a home plate to go back to, and remember which way you’ve turned a tile. So for my first experiment, I decided to turn the block to use as my starting point, and rotated it 90 degrees before applying translation. This resulted in a pattern that I wanted to explore, so I colored it in: Next, I want to show you some different patterns that emerge when you color in different parts of the same block orientation. The following three quilt layouts are made from the exact same tile orientations, they are just colored in differently based on different patterns that I saw. This first one really is minimalist, but makes for a quite dramatic quilt: For this next one, I saw the start of hand-held torches. When I get to mirroring I might explore that one a bit more. For some reason in the last one I saw pencils! So I wanted to preserve that pattern. The colors are very basic, but I think it looks pretty cool. It’s so funny – every time I work on Symmetry Saturday, I get the feeling that I’ve done more than I have. Maybe it’s because I experiment with this a lot more often than I post about it. I have tons of posts in my head, so now I’m starting to think maybe this would be a great series for HandmadeNews.org instead (or in addition to – then I can post more often!) I’m always beating myself about the head for something interesting to post there, and here I am with years worth of ideas on my blog! Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – Experimenting with Rotation
As I explore more of the techniques that Raymond Houston has outlined in his book, “Beyond Symmetry,” the sheer number of possibilities and options can be a little overwhelming sometimes. So I decided to take a step back and go back to the basics a little bit. First, I should let you in on a little secret. To get started on this, I got a copy of Raymond’s tiles. He will give you a set too if you ask him nicely. He does a great job on his blog of walking you through the basic operations of symmetry (translation, rotation, reflection, and glide reflection), and shows you how to create blocks using his original tile. Now Raymond and I have a bit of a different style for designing quilts using this method (or at least he will take the time to walk you through the process more fully!) When you get your design tiles, they have numbers in the corner to help you keep track when you are rotating the tiles. You may start off with a 4-patch or a 9-patch. I usually start with a 30-patch. In the end, you may be able to boil my patterns down to a 4-patch or 9-patch, but I like to start with a couple dozen tiles and play! You will find your own comfort level & what works for you. Raymond is a little more patient than I am, so if you want to learn how to do this, Raymond is your best teacher. If you want to see what I’m learning, that’s where Symmetry Saturday comes in! This week, by going back to the original block, I decided to see what would happen if I laid out my tiles and only did one rotation, every other tile. I did actually start with a 30-patch, but let’s boil this down to a simple 4-patch. Laying out 4 of the original tile in the same orientation, I get this: If I take the second column and rotate those tiles by 90 degrees clockwise, I get this: If I then take that 4-patch, and repeat it a couple of times, I start to see a pattern develop. You may have seen the pattern right away, but I needed more to get a better picture. I colored in one of the shapes that I wanted to explore so you could see it too! Taking that idea, expanding it, playing with the patterns that I saw, I came up with this: What do you think? Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – Block Design Using My Initials
Hopefully you all enjoyed my first post last week for SS, and over the course of the week you’ve been able to see how that block evolved into a quilt that I have on display in a gallery. This week’s feature focuses on my namesake tile. If you’ve acquired Raymond Houston’s e-book “Beyond Symmetry” (which I believe the first edition is still on sale for $10 – totally worth it!) then you would know that there is not only a method to the madness, but a neat little system for creating new tiles (and they are called “tiles” because you need multiples of them to make a block.) This part is really great for unlocking the power of designing your own tiles. As an exercise, Raymond suggests using the letters in your name to design a tile. I first designed a tile using my initials, “EDL”. A couple of things that I learned… it’s better to design your tile first, lay it out in a pattern to form your blocks, and THEN color it in. You might be surprised what patterns reveal themselves when you only have a plain tile staring at you. Just for kicks, I decided to lay out the tiles, do some rotating, and come up with a pattern for a block: It actually turned out really cool looking, and I may need to turn this one into a quilt! However… the really large sections (I think) make this a little bit limited in its uses, but I can see using it as a neat frame-type design for a medallion quilt. I then decided to try “LOVE”. When I rotated the shapes, it reminded me of black-eyed susans, so that’s the block I made: For some reason, I can’t help trying to turn all the blocks into some kind of windmill! Maybe next time, I will try something a little more abstract. I’m having a lot of fun! I hope you are too. And if you are really curious about what the fuss is about, buy Raymond’s book! (Please note – Raymond does not pay me for these shameless plugs; I’m just really “addicted” to his method of block design & I want everybody else to know about it!) I think I’ll go back to the original block next week – there are so many possibilities to explore with that one! Happy quilting!
Symmetry Saturday – My First
I’m sure you all will think I have gone absolutely bonkers. I’m just not content to have a Sunday Spotlight, or a Word “LESS” Wednesday, or a TTTT Thursday. It seems I have a need to fill every day of the week with something alliterative. Last summer, I came across this male quilter, Raymond Houston, and his “Nacho Grandma’s Quilts” site & method of block construction using a single template or “tile.” As an engineer, this particular method speaks to my fundamental desire for symmetry, order, and straight lines. (To this day, I still have not done any curved piecing. You might find this strange if you saw my collection of circular rulers, templates, scalloped stencils, and even a curvy ruler…) Anyway, I found the concept intriguing, given that there is a nearly infinite number of potential patterns, but didn’t really take it too far until more recently when I was brainstorming ideas for an art piece. By happy (non)coincidence, Raymond commented on a blog post of mine, which drew me back to his blog, which then inspired one of my newest pieces. With Raymond’s method and his single unit tile, you can make quilts which have a common foundation, but which will never be exactly the same as what someone else comes up with. in some cases, it’s even hard to tell whether they are in fact based on the same unit! I recognize that this is also an inherent part of quilting, even with the thousands of blocks which are available, but I would have to say that no other quilt block has inspired so much play and interest in me. It’s even inspired a new direction for my art. With that said, I am doing a lot of playing & discovering, and so I thought I would share some of those play sessions with you. That is what is inspiring my series “Symmetry Saturdays”, in which I will share with you a new pattern or concept or idea that I’ve gotten through play using Raymond’s tiles. I may not ever turn these sketches into quilts, but for now, it seems cool enough to just show you what I am coming up with! For this first SS, I want to share with you the block that inspired my latest work, Eye of the Storm: I guess you could call this a double 4-patch, or an 8-patch, but whatever it is, it’s pretty cool, especially when colored in. To learn more about Raymond’s system, visit his blog! Happy quilting!
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