I thought long and deep about what I was going to do with this prompt! I looked up patterns on the net, searched in the many books I own and dug through the many quilt patterns. Many I have made over the years myself. It seemed everywhere I went and everything I looked at had a pattern to it! It almost became a obsession! Finally I decided to concentrate on just creating a piece and wherever it led me I would work with it. Boy! It did not take long before, yes…..wait for it!, a pattern started to emerge! Then I realized that every piece I have every made had a pattern. Some patterns were not noticeable right away, but they all had a pattern. I threw my tension aside and it all worked out, like my motto.. “it is not what I planned, but exactly what I wanted!”

Pattern in Art can be very simple or extremely complicated. I think of a single floor tile that can stand alone as a pattern or when laid together by the hundreds on a floor or wall, create the most intricate pattern. I think about those marvelous tatted doilies that my Great Aunts made literally from one strand of string, or the Fisherman sweater they made me that was too bulky to really be comfortable. But the pattern was incredible and not appreciated by me at the time.

I made my piece purposely using just black and white. (with a slash of red for more interest) The best way to show a pattern. The circle “pancakes” have almost an optical illusion to them, and who can resist a good Zebra stripe!

The background is black wool fabric and the “pancakes” were hand appliqued on. I then machine stitched a meandering pattern and finished it off by hand stitching with string following the machine stitched lines.