This week is short and sweet and all about Shape. Shape defines the visual delineations of an object, and is determined by line or color. A shape is always two dimensional, and can either be geometric (with straight sides) or organic (with curved or irregular sides). To the eye, the outline of a basketball is a circle, the outline of a door is a rectangle, and the outline of a leaf is a variable, organic shape that is characterized only by that species of plant.
Quilters use shape when deciding how they want their quilt to look - do they want their quilt square, rectangular, octagonal, square with rounded corners, circular, rectangular with scalloped edges? Shape is very closely related to, and often dictates, Form (which we'll look at next time in more detail!). One of the most common ways we see this is with scallops.
But one of the fun things we can do is disrupt the shape - this is one of my favorite examples:
We can also create shape within a quilt by messing with our seams and lines to trick the eye into seeing shapes which aren't actually there. A great example of this is the traditional Storm at Sea setup. See how it looks like there's curves in there? There's not! It's all straight lines at angles which trick the eye into thinking there's curves.
How to do you like to play with shape in your quilts? Have you ever tried a scallop or beveled finish? Share in the comments below!
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