Crystallographic balance occurs when elements are distributed equally throughout a composition.  There is no focal point and everything has equal emphasis.  The effect is an allover pattern, either within or outside the structure of a grid. 

One-patch quilt designs could be considered crystallographic, particularly if the fabrics are placed randomly.  Hexagons arranged in concentric circles – like a Grandmother’s Flower Garden design – appear radially balanced.

But with the fabrics placed randomly, the balance becomes crystallographic.  Each hexagon has equal emphasis and there is no focal point.

The blue bird appliqué design we saw last week could be placed in a random arrangement to achieve crystallographic balance.

Or, the birds could be arranged evenly in a grid.  In this case, the composition is also symmetrically balanced – also known as translational symmetry.

My quilt Butterfly Kisses would be an example of crystallographic balance.  Drunkard’s Path blocks are interspersed with plain blocks and randomly arranged to create an allover pattern.

With asymmetrical balance, the composition cannot be divided or distributed equally from a central axis.  The two halves must have equal visual weight but the elements are arranged unevenly.  Asymmetrical balance is much more complicated and difficult to attain, but it is often considered more visually interesting and exciting.

Examples of asymmetrical patchwork blocks would include Attic Window and Little Red Schoolhouse.

Back to the blue birds, does this asymmetrical composition feel balanced?  Or do the three birds grouped together visually outweigh the one bird alone?

Does it help if the single bird is larger than the rest?

How about if more birds join the flock?

As you can see, finding balance in an asymmetrical composition is challenging and subject to many varying factors.  I was fairly certain I wouldn’t find any examples of asymmetrical balance within my own work, but I was wrong.  No Ordinary Child is an asymmetrical composition of traditional patchwork blocks such as Four Patch, Flying Geese, Diamond in a Square, Four X, Unequal Nine Patch and Rail Fence.

There is structural balance, as in the “stability produced by even distribution of weight on each side of the vertical axis”, and there is visual balance, as in “an aesthetically pleasing integration of elements” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).  When it comes to quilts, and other two-dimensional works of art, we are concerned with visual balance.  If structural balance is produced by an even distribution of physical weight, visual balance is attained through the distribution of visual weight.

Many factors affect the visual weight of an object.  Large shapes appear to weigh more than small shapes.  Light-colored shapes seem to weigh less than dark-colored shapes.  Bright colors, complexity, variety, and contrast all demand attention and add visual weight.  The challenge is to arrange all these elements – and more – into a pleasing composition.  When visual balance is missing, it makes us feel uneasy.

There are four main types of visual balance:  symmetrical, radial, crystallographic, and asymmetrical.  We will examine symmetrical and radial balance first, since they share similar characteristics.  In symmetrical balance, we imagine a line drawn through the vertical or horizontal center and we see both halves as either identical or as mirror-images of each other.  With radial balance, which is also symmetrical, the elements revolve or radiate from a central core.  By their very nature, symmetrical designs are balanced.  Let’s look at some examples.

The classic Four-Patch block and the Courthouse Steps block are symmetrical patchwork designs.  Whether you divide the block in half vertically or horizontally, both halves are the same.

When the element of color is added to the blocks, notice the impact on the visual weight.  Don’t the bright red patches seem heavier in the Four-Patch block and the dark blue logs heavier in the Courthouse Steps block?

Now let’s imagine working with an appliqué motif, such as this blue bird.

We could achieve symmetrical balance by mirroring two birds on an imaginary vertical axis…

… horizontal axis …

… or both.

We could also rotate each bird.  Each quarter remains the same.

As a fairly traditional quilter, most of my quilts are balanced symmetrically.  One quilt, however, is perfectly symmetrical.  No matter where you divide it in half – vertically, horizontally, even diagonally – the other half is exactly the same.  The quilt is called “Heart’s Desire”.

With radial balance, the focus shifts to the central core.  Dresden Plate and Mariner’s Compass blocks are both examples of patchwork blocks with radial balance.  The designs are symmetrical but they also radiate and rotate around the center.

Here are twelve blue birds in radial balance – what a lovely wreath!

It might not surprise you to learn that I am a very big fan of radial balance – all of my sewflake designs rotate around a central core!  This design, from the quilt “Go Fish”, features twelve fish in radial balance.

Something interesting happens when octagons are joined together with other octagons.  A second shape is formed:  a square.

When octagons are arranged this way in a quilt, the design is called Cobblestones.  I have had a bit of experience with making Cobblestones.  The first was a sample for my English Paper Piecing by Machine workshop, made using thirties reproduction fabrics.

The title of the workshop indicates that octagons are sewn together using English paper piecing – just like hexagons.  The second time I used the Cobblestones design was during a round robin.  This is how Gail’s quilt looked when it came to me. 

I knew she wanted to display her quilt over the back of a sofa, so I decided to add borders to two sides only and turn the square into a rectangle.  My borders were Cobblestones.

A popular patchwork block that features the octagonal shape is the Snowball block.  In this case, four triangles are added to complete the square.

These triangles can easily be disguised by using the same fabric in the sashing or borders.

This quilt features the Snowball block alternating with Four-Patch blocks.  With careful fabric placement, the shape of bow ties is formed between the octagons.  The art work in each octagon was provided by a group of second grade students as part of their unit on Traditions and Celebrations.

In this Snowball Variation block, constructed on a nine-patch grid, the center square is filled with the same fabric as the corner triangles.

The block Greek Cross subdivides four of the nine-patches into rectangles…

… and the Grecian Square block rearranges the coloring to create a different effect.

This final block featuring the octagonal shape is called Cross Roads.

Of course, what intrigues me with this block is the secondary design formed when the blocks come together.

Each of these blocks can be constructed with traditional piecing methods.  So the good news is that you can have octagons in your quilts without English paper piecing!

I discovered numerous blocks based upon the hexagonal shape.  Let’s take a look at some of them:   

Star of Bethlehem
Six triangles surround an open hexagon.  

 Six Pointed Star
The interior hexagon is divided into six triangles.  

Hexagonal Star
A hexagon is divided into diamonds, and six of the diamonds form a star.  

Star of the East
The interior hexagon is filled with six diamonds and six triangles.  

Mexican Star
The interior hexagon is still filled with six diamonds, but now the star is on point.  The triangles surrounding the hexagon are divided into two triangles and a diamond.   

Sam’s Quilt
The interior hexagon is surrounded by rectangle and kite shapes.   

Wisconsin Star
The star points surrounding an interior hexagon are filled with square, triangle, and chevron shapes. 

 Sylvia’s Choice
The hexagon and the six surrounding triangles are divided by straight lines running from each star tip.  The star is surrounded by a circle shape. 

Savannah Beautiful Star
Only the hexagon is divided and the star points are surrounded by fan shapes. 

Roulette Wheel Star for Nevada
Hexagons are nested throughout this complex block.  A large hexagon is surrounded by a circle; a medium-size hexagon is formed by six triangles and another fits inside it; and the center hexagon is divided into six kite shapes.  Did I miss any?

 Colorado
A large hexagon contains a Star of Bethlehem block with a circle in the middle.  The outer star points are divided to create triangles with diamond tips. 

Sawtooth Star
The interior hexagon is divided into six triangles, but it is barely visible.  All of the large triangles are divided into smaller triangles to create the sawtooth effect. 

Unnamed
A six-pointed star is surrounded by six hexagons.  (Blockbase references Safford and Bishop Pg. 119 for this unnamed block.) 

Columbia
Six hexagons appear to float around six diamond shapes.  Each hexagon is divided into three diamonds to create the illusion of three-dimensional boxes. 

Are you surprised to see so many unique block designs incorporating hexagons?  These blocks look stunning on their own, but how do they work side by side in a quilt layout?  This is where hexagons get really interesting.

Let’s look again at the Star of Bethlehem block and see what happens when four blocks are set side by side in a horizontal layout.

The hexagon and six triangles don’t fit evenly within a square, so the secondary design formed by the four blocks looks awkward.  Compare the horizontal layout to this layout:

Better, right?  What is the difference?  The second quilt is based on a one-patch layout, which allows the blocks to nest against each other and share the common triangles.

What about the Mexican Star block?  Compare the block in the two layouts.

Again, bringing the blocks alongside one another and sharing common triangles creates a more unified design.

There’s more!  Next week, we’ll look at six-triangle hexagon designs and three-diamond hexagon designs.

The next logical geometric shape to consider would therefore be the hexagon.  Why?  Well, what do you get when you put six equilateral triangles together?

Hexagons have a long and impressive history in quiltmaking and are more popular than you might think.  After all, sewing six sided shapes together would appear to have its difficulties.  But quilters throughout the generations have overcome these challenges to create stunning, creative and intricate quilt designs.

When groups of hexagons are colored in concentric circles, the resulting design is known as Grandmother’s Flower Garden.  I was introduced to the design during my beginner quilting class and this block made it into my first sampler quilt.  Notice how the two elongated sides on the dark green hexagons make them look like leaves.

Years later, I made a full-size Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt.  My version features burgundy patches in the centers surrounded by light, medium, and dark shades of green.  Finishing the outside edges is one of the dilemmas presented by the hexagonal shape.  I chose to keep the uneven shape and finished the outside edges with a facing.  (I’ll tell you how to do this is in a future article.)

In 2004, I wanted to enter the Husqvarna Viking quilt competition.  The theme that year was color and, once again, I was drawn to the hexagon shape.  Its six sides corresponded perfectly with the three primary colors and the three secondary colors. 

I thought I could use this to create a unique color wheel quilt.  Starting with a white hexagon in the center, I could add a row of each primary color – in this case, cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Then I could add rows of the secondary colors formed by mixing cyan with yellow, yellow with magenta, and magenta with cyan.

Finally, I could fill the remaining spaces with hexagons of every possibly color combination in between.

And here is the quilt, called Trinity.  You can read more about how I made this quilt in the blog post from February 24, 2010.

How do you sew six-sided shapes together?  Most commonly, it is done with a technique called English paper piecing.  Each hexagon patch is basted to a paper foundation and then either whip stitched together by hand or zigzag stitched together by machine.  This also would make a good subject for a future article!

But next week, we’ll continue our look at hexagons.  We’ll discover some unique hexagonal blocks and we’ll see what happens when hexagons are divided into three parallelograms.

Crayon
Good old Crayola crayons work wonderfully for embellishing – or creating – quilts.  I have a fair bit of experience with this medium and even offer a workshop on the subject.  Crayon can be applied directly to fabric and then heat set, melting the crayon right into the fibers.  To heat set, protect your ironing board cover with a layer of paper towel and iron from the wrong side of the fabric.  Layers of color can be built up for greater intensity or combined to create shading or highlights.

While crayon is a great medium for shading and highlighting appliqué motifs, I have used it for the primary elements in my quilts.  In this grapevine wreath quilt, the grapes, leaves, and stems were colored with crayon.  The edges of these elements, the leaf veins, and grapevine tendrils were machine embroidered.

This quilt combines crayon with thread painting to create the scene of a garden gate. 

This urn of fruit is another crayon creation.  Rubbing crayon over a textured surface can create some great special effects.  Crumpled aluminum foil created the crackle on the vase; a plastic onion bag was used for the pineapple; salt formed the strawberry seeds.

Photographic Images
Not only can photographs be printed onto fabric and used to embellish quilts, pretty much anything can be scanned, printed, or otherwise transferred to fabric.  I won’t go into a lot of detail here because I wrote a whole series on the subject last March (see Making the Quilt “Trinity”, Printing Fabric Part 1: Dyeing Fabric, Part 2: Photo Transfer, Part 3: Scanning & Printing, Part 4: Scanning & Printing Continued).  Here are some of the highlights:

Scanned and printed calendar photo, thread painted

Scanned and printed wallpaper, quilted table runner

Image edited kaleidoscope block

"Trinity", constructed with inkjet printed hexagon patches

Equilateral Triangles
An equilateral triangle, or a regular triangle, has three sides of equal length and three equal interior angles of 60°.

When I think of equilateral triangles in quilts, I think of Thousand Pyramids.  As I was doing a little research into this quilt design, I realized that it isn’t limited to equilateral triangles – any isosceles triangle will do.  That is to say, it requires two sides of equal length, not necessarily three.  Nevertheless, let’s take a look at Thousand Pyramids and some of its variations.

In this first example, equilateral triangles are sewn together into rows.  The second and alternating rows are mirror images of the first row.  The upward pointing triangles are one color and the downward pointing triangles another.

Another option is to color opposite triangles in such a way as to form diamonds.  This version is sometimes called Tumblers, although tumblers can also be a different shape altogether.

By off-setting the rows of triangles, Thousand Pyramids becomes Lightning.  In this coloration, with the dark triangles pointing down and the light triangles pointing up, a Dog’s Tooth design is created.

But by coloring the upward-pointing and downward-pointing triangles as a row, you get the Streak of Lightning effect.

Scalene Triangles
A scalene triangle has three unequal sides.  The interior angles may vary, but for quilters one of them is usually 90°.

This block is called Double Z and it has both scalene and isosceles triangles.  The light and dark violet patches are the scalene triangles.

Often, scalene triangle patches are found in blocks where a rectangular patch is divided in half diagonally.  Such is the case in this Nosegay block.

This example is just full of scalene triangles.  The block is called Cool Fan – just what we need in this summer heat!

Acute and Obtuse Triangles
These triangles are identified by their interior angles.  An acute triangle has three interior angles that are less than 90° whereas an obtuse triangle has one interior angle which is greater than 90°.

Many of the scalene triangles in the examples above are also acute triangles.  Patchwork blocks with obtuse triangles tend to also have acute triangles – which makes sense when you think about it.  In The Priscilla block, obtuse triangles fill in the space formed by the acute triangles.

I really like the look of this block set on point.

One of the first quilts that I ever made – the first quilt, I believe, that I finished – was made from a block of squares and half-square triangles.  The quilt, called Cabin Lights, was pictured on the cover of the first issue of Quiltmaker magazine that I ever bought (which must have been sometime in 1994).  The design is created by the position of light and dark color values.  It was presented in the magazine as a scrap quilt but since I didn’t have any scraps yet, I had to buy all the light and dark blue fabrics that I used in the quilt.  I called my quilt “Miles To Go Before I Sleep”, because the wintry trees in the border fabric reminded me of Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

There are so many blocks made entirely from half-square triangles, it is hard to decide which ones to feature.  So let’s choose from some of the quilts I have made.  This first block is an old classic called “Corn and Beans”.  Where the four blocks came together in the middle, I replaced some of the smaller triangles with a large one to create space for the appliqué.  A pieced border echoes the shapes formed by the blocks.  The result is a 24-½” square wall quilt called Great is Thy Faithfulness.

Another block made entirely from half-square triangles – with a name near and dear to my heart – is Lady of the Lake.  Again, I modified the block by replacing some of the small triangles so that four blocks together would have open background space.  In this space, I appliquéd cottage-themed sewflakes – papercut appliqué designs.

I discovered something interesting while I was designing this quilt.  When two sets of half-square triangles came together along the outer edges of the Lady of the Lake blocks, they formed a flying geese unit.  This is how I ultimately constructed the quilt, also adding a border of half-square triangles to complete the flying geese around the outside edges.

The entire quilt measures 64″ square and is called Be Still.

This final example was chosen because it illustrates a less traditional use of half-square triangles.  The blocks were made using Paula Nadelstern’s simple symmetry technique.  Four half-square triangles were cut from the exact same location in symmetrical fabric as well as four mirror-images of those triangles.  When the eight triangles were sewn together, beautiful kaleidoscopic images were formed.  In this case, the triangles are just the tool that was used to create shapes that are anything but geometric.  I’d say, based on our categories of shapes, the kaleidoscopic images are non-objective or maybe even accidental.

Believe it or not, I have more to say about triangles!  This is because half-square triangles, while predominant, are not the only kind of triangles used in quilts.  Next week, we’ll look at equilateral, scalene, acute and obtuse triangles to discover what amazing effects they can produce in quilt design.

The first place I went looking was Quilting Arts Magazine.  Their website features a Photo Gallery where readers can submit their quilt and fiber art.  This is where the first three examples were located.

“Green in the Middle” by Meta Heemskerk

The fuzzy centers are made from thread and embroidery floss stitched on water-soluble stabilizer.  They are set onto squares of painted Lutradur (a 100% polyester spun bond non-woven translucent web) and mounted on a painted canvas.

“Gandhi Fabric Mosiac Strip Quilt” by Diana’s Art Quilts

Isn’t this amazing?  Especially when you consider that this representation of Mahatma Gandhi is made entirely from ¼-inch rectangles!  Diana states that she made this 18″ x 20″ block as a donation to a theme quilt on racism.

“Sunset” by Sue Bleiweiss

This rectangle in a square was made from hand-dyed silk, rolled and made into cord, and glass beads.

“Rectangle Reunion” by Moran Art and Quilts

This rectangular study is for sale!  Check it out on Etsy…

“3D Squares” by Moran Art and Quilts

Also for sale on Etsy, this quilt truly does give the illusion of three-dimensional floating squares.

“Geometrus 2 (Noonday Walk)” by Kay Haerland

I love this quilt!  Kay says she wanted to see if she could create a landscape using geometric shapes, in this case, rectangles.  Definitely!  This quilt was exhibited at the 2005 Pacific International Quilt Festival XIV and won fourth place for Open Art Quilts at the 2005 Sydney Quilt Show.

“Square Dance Quilt” by Marcia Dean

Even though this quilt is contructed with traditional patchwork, it has a very art quilt feel to it.  It is available for sale at the Cambridge Artists Cooperative.

“Kid’s Garden Trellis” by Ann Anderson

What a fun and vibrant use of rectangles!  This quilt is for sale from Ann Anderson Designs.

“Springtime Forever” by Isabelle Wiessler

Isn’t this a beautiful use of squares?  This quilt understandably earned the Judge’s Choice award in the 2006 Husqvarna Viking Quilt Competition “Imagine That!”

Squares
The humble square is such an important shape in quilts – after all, most quilt blocks are square!  One of the first quilts I ever made was a baby quilt for my neice.  Simple Four Patch blocks alternate with plain squares for a quick and easy, yet pleasing, quilt design.

Another popular quilt design based on a square is the Irish Chain and all its many variations.  This version is a Triple Irish Chain.

I made this Irish Chain quilt using fabric prints that blend gradually from one to the next to create a colorwash effect.  What a difference!  It becomes more difficult to discern the shape of each square patch when the edges are less defined.

When a square is set on point, it looks more like a diamond.  The Arbor Window quilt block features squares set on point.  Technically, this block requires triangles to finish the edges, but they are barely visible in the quilt design.

Rectangles
The first block made of rectangles that comes to mind is Rail Fence.  I’ve made a couple Rail Fence quilts because they are so quick and easy – with no matching required!  Unfortunately, these quilts were made before the era of digital photography so I don’t have any pictures readily available.  Here’s an EQ6 Rail Fence design:

Another popular rectangular quilt design is the Log Cabin.  Traditionally, this block has a square in the center, but here’s a version with a rectangle in the middle.

I searched a little further and came across a very interesting block, also made entirely from rectangles, called Rainbow Steps.  There are so many effects that can be created from this block, and here are three examples done in EQ6.

 Next week:  triangles.