Designing with Geometrics on Off the Wall Friday

 

Heritage Medallion, 60" by 60
Nina-Marie Sayre, 1996

Well, you can imagine what I thought, when my rug hooking teacher, Cindi Gay announced the next big topic was designing with geometrics.  I mean as a 35-year quilter, geometrics is kinda like our bread and butter, right?  Apparently, some rug hookers shy away from geometrics because the rug police said your lines must be straight, edges perfect (hard to do with fluffy wool!).  That totally reminds me of the quilt police judging if your points match and your seams are press properly.  (huge eye roll)

Her design directions were very loose.  Design a geometric pattern that would fit on a square grid. To get us started she gave us a PDF full of geometric shapes to cut out and play with.  Oh, that's new.  I never tried to do it that way.  Over the years I've tried a ton of ways.  

Back at the beginning, I would grab graph paper and pencils.  With my engineering diploma all shiney I had a ton of graph paper left over from school.  Here are a couple of my designs from the early 90's...

Nothing fancy but I already was playing around with new designs and geometrics.  

But really who am I fooling...I've been playing with geometrics since the '70's when I got the book Altair Designs by  Ensor Holiday at the book fair in 5th grade  (1977...lol).  In those days a coloring book of geometrics was an oddity.  I found the patterns fascinating and had no problem spending hours working out designs.   My husband couldn't believe I still have it and easily pulled it from the shelf to take some pictures to share here ... this is 10-12 year old Nina's work...

Am I the only one that is amazed at how good markers hold up after 50 years?
gasp! Lord Jesus, where does the time go?

Along with color books you can look to traditional quilt blocks for inspiration....and there is no shortage of them!

I even had the first version of Electric Quilt back in the late 90's to design with but found it way too clunky.   What I haven't tried though was taking geometric little cards and forming them into blocks.  So, I took some time to at least play with Cindi's blocks and here are some of my attempts.....

If I was actually going to do this, I would print them on card stock and they would be much easier to move around.  I do like how keeping it black and while you can just concentrate on the shape.  Adding in the circles was interesting and I think I'll explore that some more. 

You could take it one step further and get a set of mosaic blocks to play with shape.  

It's funny how there are so many ways to create and brain storm simple geometric patterns.  Cindi encouraged us to look at the world around you and see what shapes you are drawn to.  Look at the rhythm of the shapes and the composition ....

After taking the week to explore geometrics, I realized how much more I had to learn.  I haven't even really started on my design, but I have some good ideas going.  It's going to be so much fun to do this as a hook along with the rest of the class...it's fun to discover something new on a topic you thought you knew so well!  

Also, as I discover rug hooking bloggers, I'm starting to invite them into our link up.  As always - if your post is creative, it's welcome! 

So, What Have You Been Up to Creatively?

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