Designing in modules – building blocks, if you will – could hardly be simpler.  For a basic example, look at a brick wall.  Here one has the mass of masonry stretching out, but the basic of it is the brick.  From something you can hold in one hand to the Coliseum in Rome is only a matter of multiplicity, design, and skill in placement.

A garment shape like my ruana is ideal for this approach.  For such a simple shape, it can be worn in a multitude of ways – even as a wrap skirt!

My plan is simply to fill the two large and one small rectangle with smaller rectangles of lace pattern swatches.

The unifying aspects are the overall color – in this case the dark teal yarn – and the rectangle shape of each module.

I’ll also be grouping lace patterns in strips according to the stitch count.  The small rectangle is 40 stitches wide, and each large rectangle is about three times the width, and a little more than twice the length of the small.  This gives me some data to play with the numbers and make decisions accordingly for which patterns to include.

I plan to keep within a few parameters in these choices.   I won’t include very stretchy lace stitches, or very open ones.  This only knocks out large areas of faggoting and the Crown of Glory patterns, actually.  I want fairly compact, but well-defined laces.

I won’t be using the Frost Flowers again for this project, but not because it doesn’t meet those decisions, but because I’ve used it a bit often lately!

Bilateral symmetry is not needed here, and actually would be less interesting than the variety of patterns and sizes of rectangle building blocks.  Think of the individual differences between bricks or stones in a wall, rather than the exactitude of tiles in a bathroom wall.