Week 81: Adobe Illustrator

Radio Grille Mandala pattern 1 © Karen Thiessen, 2014

For twenty years I've played with a radio grille that was once a speaker in a very large radio cabinet. The radio was gone long before I received the cabinet,  but the speaker with its grille was still intact. I had the speaker removed and now the cabinet houses books. Before our ancient speaker and receiver went up in smoke (literally) in early January 2007, the cabinet contained a cool 1970s Pioneer receiver inherited from an aunt, and a CD player bought with the income tax return in our first year of marriage. While I was a textiles student at Sheridan college, I silk-screened a reduced version of the radio grille onto various fabrics. Here's the radio grille motif in a quilt.

Since I've been learning Illustrator, I decided to revisit the motif and see how it looks in repeat. Last week's pattern is derived from a section of the radio grille put into repeat, and for this week's pattern, I simply rotated the grilles around a centre axis, thus creating mandalas. I like how the circles look like the doilies that my Oma and great-Omas crocheted.