Doodling leads to compulsions

Once again Karen Ruane sends me into a world of inquiry that leads to surprising results ( here )

I've been playing with circles for a couple of years now and still find them interesting as a means to study colour interplay and patterns. I tested my 'permanent' markers for the step of adding colour to the textile, once the tracing with ink was completed.

One of those lucky/unlucky moments happened when some steam from the iron spurted out and caused some markers to bleed. I squirted the whole piece to figure out what would run and what wouldn't. I like some of the bleeds, and now know who to anticipate using them. The dark green one is interesting.

Karen challenged us to keep on doodling towards creating a pattern that could be repeated as they are in yards of fabric.

I began by drawing a grid of lines, then traced over three different leaf motifs, flipping the tracing paper back and forth to get different orientations. I added in the simple floral motif and then made sure there was a motif on each edge that could line up. For instance, there is a floral motif in the middle of the right edge (your right) that is missing it's top. You can spy it on the left edge at the midpoint.

I traced over the first design omitting any lines that overlapped that I didn't like.

Here the original and the good copy are side by side. You can see that the curving leaf joins the two sheets together.

Here the tip of the leaf and a floral motif join together at the overlap. If I were to trace the good copy four times, making sure the joining spots lined up, I could look at the original design and see if it would translate into a good overall fabric pattern. In the image above, you can see where there are two or three empty spots. That might not be so noticeable if all four edges were drawn up but we'll never know, because while this was fun and interesting, it takes me away from stitching. I could get lost in this practice. There are so many neat shapes and intersections that could develop. What if the grid lines were dominant instead of in the background. What if the floral elements were coloured, or not while the leaves were coloured. What colours? It is pretty speculative. Then I'd have to get it printed up and start to cut up the fabric to see how it would look stitched in different ways. What if I left it black and white and stitched the colours in? See what I mean? This could be just too much fun.