After lots of happy chugging along, as you can see Trifles is nearing completion.
I’ve got only eight more gears to finish up, including the two in process now. Then come a couple of “Trifles,” modeled on the little soot demons from Spirited Away, another special request from the target recipient. The hapless little things will be prisoners in the mechanism.
Finally, if there’s room and it looks good, I plan to add some brass watch gears for extra Steampunk flavor.
To answer questions, no – I am not planning this in advance. I choose the fill and color as each new gear presents itself. I chose to use four colors as a nod to the (rarely used) four color theorem, which states that any contiguous plane map can be colored in using only four colors, and have no two regions of the same color touching each other. In my case as a non-mathematician, this was done on a lark, and adds geeky joy.
I do admit that a little logical thinking has been used to select the optimal color for each gear, in a “If I make this one brown, then this one will have to be gold, and that one must be maroon,” sort of way. But again I haven’t sat down and plotted my plan of attack, other than to make the juncture point where I finish adding gears around the motto be the narrowest point of the sampler, to simplify any color meet-up issues.
On fills, I’ve tried to mix up densities and shapes, to achieve as much contrast as possible. So fills based on interlaces abut fills with isolated spot motifs, which bump up against all-over small geometrics, which in turn are next to line-based fills with few or no closed shapes. I’ve had a lot of fun paging through Ensamplario Atlantio looking for the best choice for each gear. And I’ve ended up doodling a few more, just for fun. Here are a couple:
The rather annoyed unicorn is an adaptation of a motif from the open source pattern group exercise I hosted here back in 2010/2011. I have to say that doodling these is addictive. Just playing around, I’ve put together twenty more design squares, including those I collected from the Victoria and Albert Museum smock, item T.113-188-1997. I could easily do dozens more. Now comes a question, with T2CM now finished and awaiting only resolution of logistical and publication issues prior to general availability, do I release the new group as a fifth section of Ensamplario Atlantio, or do I go on and start on Ensamplario Secundo?
String-Or-Nothing 
This is looking really beautiful. Those new fillings are great, too – I particularly like the leafy flowers because I can see myself using something like that. The unicorn is clever, but I don’t have the experience to see it as something other than an all-over diaper pattern even though where the gryphons and other large figurative fillings work really well in your sampler. I’ll happily purchase your patterns in whichever form you choose to publish them! I’ve thought about applying the four-colour theorem to a Penrose tiling pattern, but that would be more appropriate to a large bed-quilt than to blackwork. I don’t make bed-quilts.
Thanks! I think the unicorn would be a nice all-over design for a small pillow. Or an adorable coif for a little girl. 🙂
I did manage to use it as a fill in the current project. If the space is big enough, even the largest fills will work nicely.
And thanks for the kind words! The fill collection add-on or sequel (whichever I do) will be free like Ensamplario Atlantio. Only the Modelbook series will be paid.