Tangled Line Art Runners
Taking The First Step
Have you ever wondered about what the first step would be to create a Tangled Line Art piece? Wonder no more, the following is a brief overview of my processes.
Lets review the images of the two quilt runners in my earlier post. You will notice that each runner has a narrow border. In the interests of keeping this post fairly straight forward, I will only be covering an overview of how I would approach creating a Tangled Line Art work based on the centre panel.
Traditional quilt blocks fall into a number of broad categories based on the number of ‘patches’ within the ‘block’. The centre panel of this runner consists of 3 blocks based on a very basic ‘four patch’ block. The block consists of four ‘patches’ where each patch is subdivided diagonally. Each of the ‘patches’ can be rotated giving more variations of the same basic block.
This image on the left shows the original block with some of the possible variations.
Consider joining 3 of the same’blocks’ – What would happen if you changed the block in the middle? How would that change the overall design? Does the colouring of each patch in each block need to be the same? No, off course it doesn’t.
The images to the right and below show some of the possibilities of the variations of this basic block. I have left them as plain colours to make it easier to see the divisions of each ‘patch’.
Some Other Ideas to Think About
These samples only show 3 blocks in a row. What would happen if you added another three blocks either side? Yes, you would end up with a square. However, thinking a bit deeper than that, how would the blocks interact where they meet? Would this create different designs possibilities?
Now that we have some basic outlines to work with, we need to add parabolic curves to create our Tangled Line Art.
Follow this link to see how to draw a basic parabolic curve along with a few variations.
Don’t limit yourself to work with my ideas only. I encourage you to try out your own ideas as well. Some will work, some may not. Just remember that it is our mistakes that we learn the most from.
The image to the left shows one example is but one idea reflecting how you could draw parabolic curves within one basic four patch block. The dashed lines are only there to illustrate where the design lines are and wold not be included in the final piece.
Whilst I have drawn all these parabolic curves in the same colour, there is no rule to say that this needs to be the case. Try drawing this exact block several times over, choosing two or more complimentary colours.
I am currently working on a couple of full size pieces based on this basic ‘four patch’ block and will post the completed designs in due course.
Why don’t you try your hand at creating a Tangled Line Art runner, go ahead and take your ‘first step’ you’ll be surprised just how easy it is.