Quilts and quilt designs are created when the maker combines blocks.
A block is the basic unit of a quilt top. Typically they are square. They can be any size, and a quilt is frequently made from many blocks of the same design. They can be pieced from smaller shapes, appliquéd, or left plain.
Why simple shapes work best
This is counter-intuitive and it is the most useful thing to understand about quilt design.
The interest in a quilt rarely comes from the complexity of an individual block. It comes from what happens when blocks are repeated and set next to each other.
Squares and half-square triangles – a square cut corner to corner – between them produce an enormous proportion of traditional quilt designs. The variety comes from how they are arranged and which parts are light and dark, not from the shapes themselves.
Complex blocks often look worse repeated, because there is too much happening for the eye to find a pattern.
Value matters more than colour
The single most important design principle in quilting.
What creates a quilt’s pattern is the arrangement of light and dark, not the arrangement of hues. A design in five shades of blue can be more striking than one in five different colours, if the values are well distributed.
The test: photograph your fabrics in black and white. If they all look the same shade of grey, the design will be flat however different the colours look on the shelf.
Secondary patterns
The best part of repeated blocks. When identical blocks sit side by side, their edges combine to make shapes that are not in any single block – stars, circles, diagonal chains.
Those secondary patterns are frequently the most striking thing about a finished quilt, and they are invisible until the blocks are joined.
This is why laying out the whole quilt before sewing matters. What each block looks like alone tells you very little.
The setting
How blocks are arranged changes everything.
Straight rows, on point (turned forty-five degrees), with sashing between them, or with alternating plain blocks. The same block in four settings gives four quite different quilts.
Sashing between blocks calms a busy design; blocks set edge to edge maximise the secondary patterns.
Practically
Start with squares and half-square triangles. Make a dozen blocks, lay them out on the floor, and photograph the arrangement from a distance before sewing anything.
Move them around. This costs nothing and is where the design actually happens.
