Patterns with “expanded squares”

Make Art Monday!

In the June/July issue of Quilting Arts, Jane Dunnewold has a really fun article on how to make what she calls “expanded squares”. I recommend getting the issue to read all of Jane’s tips, but the basics are quite simple: you cut out a black square, and then cut out pieces from each side, flipping them over to become mirror images around the outside of the square. So I decided to play around a little bit, and this is my first attempt:

Not rocket science, huh? But you can do some pretty cool things with these. As an award-winning fiber artist, Jane’s interest lies mostly in fabrics. She showed how she tiled her designs, similar in a fashion to Escher’s tessellations, so I decided to try this as well. I learned years ago how to create a “stamp” in Photoshop, so I scanned my square, converted it to a PS brush, and then “tessellated” away! Here’s what I got:

I’m starting to see all kinds of interesting possibilities with this technique… transfer to fabrics, a collage background layer, a psychedelic coloring book…

Any thoughts?

Tomorrow, for Technique Tuesday, I’ll share with you the steps for making a “stamp” in Photoshop.