Elements of Design: Day 3

Today's topic was pattern. You would think that repeating patterns would be a walk in the park for a group where most everyone works in some sort of quilted textile form. Not so. Most of us made a few traditionally pieced quilts then followed our natural inclination away from that sort of structure and pattern. There was a good bit of grumbling today. But, this is supposed to be about learning to solve design problems.

All day we worked with a single blank 1x1" stamp. The first exercise was to develop a series of 4x4 patterns, pick the "best," and use that to build a 3x3 regular repeating pattern, including some combination of overlap, light, dark, and mid-tone values, and masking.

I'd rate my result as so-so.

The next assignment was to build an irregular pattern. I think that my result is only only subtly irregular. And, I can say that by now I was starting to not like being constrained by this particular 1x1" tool.

To the relief of all, our final assignment was to continue working with the same 6x6 grid of 1"squares and begin layering, using the grid as a foundation with which to interact. My two efforts thus far appear below. The second is definitely the more successful of the two. I think there will be time for one more run at it tomorrow morning before we move on to the next topic: Shape.