Category: Electric Quilt Software

Quiltmaker's Blog tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 14

11/18/2016

Block # 1359 Conduit

Welcome to my blog for volume 14 of Quiltmaker’s 100 Designer Blocks blog tour. This is my block. I named it “Conduit”. I’ll explain how I developed this block using my trusty Electric Quilt software in this blog. I will be sending one lucky blogger a free copy of Volume 14 at the end of the tour. If you would like to be that lucky person you need to do two things, please visit my Facebook page and click on the “Like” and also leave a comment below. If you have already “Liked” my page then just leave a comment below. I will remind you what you have to do again at the end. Monday, November 21 at 12:00 midnight is the deadline. P.S. if you don't do Facebook, you'll still be included. Just tack that fact onto your comment that you leave below.

Congratulations to Barb Y. of California! I hope you find a lot of inspiration in this issue.
And a big thank you to everyone who visited and left a comment! I'm glad you enjoyed my block and my explanation.

The idea for this block came from my love of switching around the traditional value mapping of familiar blocks. I love Flying Goose units. They’re incredibly versatile to work with. By changing the value placement your ideas can travel into many different directions. I started with the Dutchmen’s Puzzle block shown below.

I handled the block like it was a four patch and rotated some of the double goose units. Next I changed the placement of the values to create a block that would tessellate with its neighboring blocks to create an endless tiling pattern.

Now it was time to choose the colors I would like to work with. I was feeling a bit psychedelic so I chose some stimulating colors for the unit. Here’s the block with the colors I chose.

First I used the block in a horizontal tile setting using the grey scale block. Then I plugged in the colored block to see what it would look like.

Then I played around with making it a bit more complicated. I wondered what the quilt would look like if I added alternate block coloring to the layout, below on the left result. I wondered what would happen if the values changed progressively through the design. This is the design on the right, below.

Going back to my first value map of the block I then wondered what would the quilt look like set on point. Here is the result in grey scale and in color.

I looked through the JPEG swatches in my EQ program for some blender and tonal fabrics to use in my design. On the left below, is an example of what it would look like with blenders from Quilting Treasures Fabrics. Next I needed to find fabrics in my stash to use in the block. Next I printed out the specification sheet from my EQ program, below right.

I took the image with me to look through my stash to see what would match the colors in my image as I imagined it. I started with the violet fabrics first. I needed one cool violet and the other needed to be a warm violet.

I found the two purples and now it was time to find the right green.
Flowing from left to right you can follow my process.

Now that I had my violets and my green it was time to look for the perfect red fabric to compliment the other colors.
At first I thought that I needed a true red color but when I looked at the violets and the green with the reds, I didn’t feel that they were the right match.

So I tried the very deep pink colors I have in my stash. These pink colors are so deep and saturated that they almost are like a red but they have a little more excitement to them. I really like the way these looked and on the right, below, is the one I chose from the box.

Now it was time to spec out the individual Flying Geese units that I needed to make. After sewing up all the units and joining them together I was really pleased with the result!

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Don’t forget visit my Facebook page (if you do FB) and click the “Like” button and also to leave a comment below. If you have already “Liked” my Facebook page then just leave a comment below. Do one or both of these things and you could be the lucky winner of a free copy of Volume 14 at the end of the tour. Monday, November 21 at 12:00 midnight is the deadline.

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Quiltmaker's Blog Tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 13

5/6/2016

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BLOCK # 1228 TILTED LILY

Welcome to my blog for volume 13 of Quiltmaker’s 100 Designer block blog tour. This is my block. I named it “Tilted Lily” because the traditional Carolina Lily block is set on-point. This one is in a square setting. I’ll explain how this came about a little further down in this blog. I will be sending one lucky blogger a free copy of Volume 13 at the end of the tour. If you would like to be that lucky person you need to do two things, please visit my Facebook page and click on the “Like” and also leave a comment below. If you have already “Liked” my page then just leave a comment below. I will remind you what you have to do again at the end. Monday, May 9 at 12:00 midnight is the deadline. P.S. if you don't do Facebook, you'll still be included. Just tack that fact onto your comment that you leave below.

Congratulations to Beth T. from Oregon! I hope you find a lot of inspiration in this issue.
And a big thank you to everyone who visited and left a comment! I'm glad you enjoyed my block and my explanation.

My first experience with the Carolina Lily block and Y-seams happened when I decided to enter the competition New Quilts from an Old Favorite. The theme for 2014 was the Carolina lily. I knew immediately that I wasn’t going sew a single Y-seam. No Way! I was sure that there had to be an easier way. The only idea that I came across was to make the lily from two Flying Geese units and a Half Square Triangle (HST) unit. The only problem with this technique was that it made the two opposite “V” sections of the petals too deep and the center “V” was too short. This gave the lily a distorted aspect.

I decided that I would work with the technique that uses two Flying Geese units and a Half Square Triangle unit. I figured there had to be a way to use this technique without the resulting distortion. To do this I needed to use my ever dependable Electric Quilt software (EQ). I drafted a single Carolina Lily block flower that had y-seams. I converted the block to guidelines and then drafted over the outlines and the diagonal line that creates the triangle at the bottom. Then I connected the ends of the diagonal with the “V” of the center petal. This creates a Half Square Triangle unit. Next I simply continued the diagonal line of the flower petal until it reached the side of the Half Square Triangle unit. I called these units “Tall” Flying Geese. To construct the “Tall” Flying Geese units I created a foundation paper pattern.

My next encounter with the Lily block and Y-seams was with our Quilt Guild’s raffle quilt. The design that we came up with was an on point setting and it included mostly non-directional applique blocks. The only problem was the setting of the lily block was directional and we felt that it threw everything off visually. After pondering this for a while a solution was found. In one of the magazines we saw a Sue Garman design, "Bed of Roses" that was set on point and included applique. In this quilt the designer used square set applique blocks around the center block. The directional aspect of the applique blocks around the center makes the design feel like a medallion quilt.

So I decided that I could do the same thing with our Carolina Lily block by adding triangles to the sides creating a square set. And that’s how the Lily became “Tilted”.
I was planning on sewing “Tilted Lily” block with my “tall” geese technique when I realized that our quilt design also included a Blazing Star block which is also made with Y-seams. The Blazing Star block is used in the setting triangles as a partial block. Since both blocks include Y-seams I felt it would be confusing to use two different techniques to avoid the Y-seams. So I decide that whatever worked for the Blazing Star block would also work for the Lily block.

I knew that this block would be easier for me to construct if it was a foundation piecing pattern. I started by extending the seam lines to eliminate the Y-seams. I noticed that two adjacent areas contained the same color fabric, so I eliminated the seams line between those pieces.

Now it was time to apply the same idea to the Lily block and here is the result. A much simpler way to construct a challenging block.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Don’t forget visit my Facebook page and click the “Like” button and also to leave a comment below. If you have already “Liked” my Facebook page then just leave a comment below. Do these things and you could be the lucky blogger to win free copy of Volume 13 at the end of the tour. Monday, May 9 at 12:00 midnight is the deadline

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New Quilt Design, Prairie Sky, in Quiltmaker Magazine January/February 2016

12/7/2015

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I have a new design in the Quiltmaker magazine January/February 2016 issue. The quilt pattern is called Prairie Sky. The folks at Quiltmaker chose the name and I think it matches their fabric choice perfectly. I originally named it the “Owl Eyes” as the block looked like a large pair of eyes staring back at me.

This design started as a doodle that I made while waiting for an appointment. Wherever you go, you should carry a sketch book with you. Try to find a small one that fits in your bag, as you never know when inspiration will catch up to you. I started by filing in the squares on the graph paper to create an interesting pattern. After sketching out a couple of repeats I looked for the base unit and marked with a couple of lines.

After I drafted the design into my Electric Quilt (EQ) program I colored it using only grey and black values for contrast. I next tried rotating the block in different ways to see what the design would look like. I decided I liked the original sketch best. After returning to the original version I toyed with adding different values and the placement of the values. Once I had the values and their placement decided I swapped the grey tones for a color.

Next I added borders to the blocks that supported the scale of the design. Then I went looking through my EQ Stash files for a fun collection to audition in this design. I found a number of current collections that I liked. In my EQ program I replaced the grey values with the new fabric choices. I think this design would look great in any type of fabric. If you make one please send me the images and I’ll post it on my web site.

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Quiltmaker's Blog Tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 12

11/20/2015

104 Comments

Block # 1129 Calypso

Greetings! I’m glad that you have come to visit my blog for the volume 12 Quiltmaker’s 100 designer blocks blog tour. Here is my block. I named it Calypso because of it's colors it has tropical feel to it. As you know, I will be sending one lucky tourist will go home with their very own copy of this wonderful resource at the end of the tour. In this blog, I’m going to share with you my journey to the final block design. Read it to the end to find out how to get your chance at owning this issue of Quiltmaker’s 100 blocks. Also, don’t forget to visit me on Facebook and click the “Like” button. I would appreciate it greatly.

As I told you in my last post, the inspiration for this block came from Seminole piecing designs. The design the I wanted to adapt into a block is called Rattlesnake. Here are a couple of examples of the Rattlesnake band design shown in grey scale.

Originally, I had used the design in the border of a wall-hanging I made for a guild challenge. I loved the way it looked in the finished project.

I started by opening up the block I had used in the Pansy wall-hanging. For the original block I had partitioned the side of the square into 7 divisions. I used the center section as placement for the crossing part of the design.

For this project I decided that I wanted the cross element to be narrower than it was. I thought that this would make the design more striking if a very bold contrast was introduced into that part of the block.

To match this new design direction, I changed the partition from 7 to 9 and connected the center section to make the crossing element. I left the old blocks design lines in as guidelines for you to see.

You can also see in the image above that I changed the size of satellite square from my Calypso block design during the development of the block design. I felt that the square needed to be smaller to compliment the narrower size of the cross element. It may only seem like a small change but I felt that it made a difference in the appearance of the block design. You can compare the blocks side by side below.

The next step in my process is to audition different fabrics into the design so that I may see what kind of fabrics that it favors. Can the fabrics used be of a large or small scale design. Also I want to discern how strong the contrast needs to be for the quilt design to have the appropriate amount of visual impact. I use the fabrics found in my EQ software fabric libraries.
For this block it’s best to use smaller prints, solid and tonal fabrics. It’s also important to make sure you have a high contrast between all 4 fabrics. Here are some examples below.

Now it was time for me to decide what fabrics I wanted to use when I made my block. I decided on dyed fabric. I hand dye fabric and had a ready supply. Next I chose my colors. Since the design needs a strong contrast, I decided to use complementary colors. I chose to use violet and it’s complement of yellow alongside orange and it’s complement of blue. I thought these would make a striking palette. I played with the solid color palette in my EQ software to find the right shades for my block design.

I used my 3 in 1 Color Tool from Joen Wolfrom help me find fabrics in my stash that would give me a similar result. I rely heavily on this tool as my knowledge of color is learned and not instinctual. If you are like me then I would recommend you get one for yourself. It's a worth while investment.

I pulled out the cards that seemed to best match my vision. I considered Red-Violet and Purple for the violet background. For the yellow and oranges hues I compared Orange-Red, Orange-Yellow and Yellow-Orange. For the blue cross I had to choose between Aqua Blue and Cerulean Blue. I used these cards to help me search through my fabrics to find the perfect match. I pulled out my stash boxes for blue, violets, yellow and orange.

After much consideration I made my decision. These were my final choices for the orange & yellow squares, blue cross and violet background.

I was very pleased with how close the finished block was to my original EQ version of the design. The block on the left below is the EQ image. Next to that I have my fabric palette and finally, to the right, the finished block. I was lucky to have the right fabrics but EQ helped me to identify them.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my blog. To enter the drawing to win a free copy of Quiltmaker's 100 Designer Blocks Volume 12, please leave a comment below and don't forget, if you haven't already done it, please visit my Facebook page, Iris Quilts & Dyed Fabrics and click on the "Like" button. Happy Quilting!

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Quiltmaker's Blog tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 14

Block # 1359 Conduit

Quiltmaker's Blog Tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 13

BLOCK # 1228 TILTED LILY

New Quilt Design, Prairie Sky, in Quiltmaker Magazine January/February 2016

Quiltmaker's Blog Tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 12

Block # 1129 Calypso

Janice Averill
West Haven, Connecticut, United states

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Archives

Quiltmaker's Blog tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 14

Block # 1359 Conduit

Quiltmaker's Blog Tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 13

BLOCK # 1228 TILTED LILY

New Quilt Design, Prairie Sky, in Quiltmaker Magazine January/February 2016

Quiltmaker's Blog Tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 12

Block # 1129 Calypso

Janice AverillWest Haven, Connecticut, United states

Categories

Archives

Janice Averill
West Haven, Connecticut, United states