I slowed down designing for Quilt Design a Day during February as I worked to finish other projects. Designing every day is very fulfilling and exercises my creative muscles. How do you exercise your creativity?
Have a quilty day!!
Category: Design Wall Monday
Quilt Design a Day January Designs
I try to design every day and upload the design to Quilt Design a Day. This wonderful group of designers is so warm and supportive that it is a real pleasure to see what every one creates and to read the comments on every one’s designs.
Please visit again on February 5 for the We Support You Blog Hop.
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Quilt Design a Day–Month 7
I’ve completed my seventh month of designs with Quilt Design a Day.
Here are December’s quilt designs:
Have a quilty day!
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Quilt Design a Day–Getting back in the groove
My designs slowed down in September and October. I wasn’t able to design every day, but I am getting back in the swing in November. With these 30 designs I have earned my “150 day badge” with Quilt Design a Day.
Experiencing ‘quilter’s block’ is no fun! I think that most of the block was due to an increase in family obligations, septic issues (yuk) and the inspiration pictures we were using on Qdad were getting stale (I lost count of the photos of the same geode, lol). Our Qdad leader, Anne Sullivan, switched us over to member contributed photos. Every day I am excited about the design inspiration and the palettes which go along with them. My turn to post photos will come right after Christmas. I am exited about some new projects in the months to come and, hopefully, some blog hops with the irrepressible Madame Samm. Please stay with me on my journey.
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A quilt party: Spiked Punch on the Longarm!!
It is such a joy for me to quilt for clients and to help them finish quilts. Last week I spent my time on a client’s quilt, made from a pattern called Spiked Punch by Tula Pink. The fabrics in it were from Amy Butler’s latest line “Glow” and some Tula Pink fabric. Here is a screen shot of the quilt mockup:
I used a Whispy Feather design by Donna Kleinke of One Song Needlearts, a fill pattern by Anita Shackelford and a curved grid fill of my own design. It was fun to place the feathers ‘behind’ the stacked bricks (something I’ve seen hand-guided quilters do) with computer-aided design and quilt it with the computer. Note, I still sat and ‘helped’ the needle to stitch in the ditch along the bricks. It is fun to fill the negative space with quilty lusciousness!!
Have a quilty day!!
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Travelling Stash Box, 120 Day Qdad badge…
Welcome!! It was so nice to send my son off to his first day as a Junior in high school. How time flies!!! It seems like yesterday that he was a babe, now he is 6’4″!!! He views my quilting projects with a critical eye and knows where to find freezer paper in the grocery store. Time has certainly flown this summer and I know I haven’t been blogging enough. I have been busy off-blog working on projects which I will show you on September 8 for the See you in September blog hop. I hope you will be pleased with my upcoming–‘What I sewed this summer’ projects. Tomorrow is the first day of the hop, so please visit tomorrow’s blogs which I will list below.
I continue to design quilts for Quilt Design a Day, I earned the 120-day badge!! Here are my designs from August:
In the slideshow you will see quilts from two weeks of Qdad challenges, including the Medallion Quilt challenge. Another challenge starts next week: ‘Shapes in our neighborhood’. I’m always amazed by the wonderful quilt designs which my fellow Qdad-ers post. Come join in on the fun!!
Starting tomorrow check out my fellow blog-hoppers summer projects:
Wednesday, September 3
Sew Incredibly Crazy
Bumbleberry Cottage
Thimblemouse and Spouse
Mad Quilter’s Disease
In The Boon Docks
Thursday, September 4
Jane’s Quilting
Life in the Scrapatch
Sew Many Yarns
Gracie Oliver Arts
Everyone Deserves a Quilt
Friday, September 5
Stitchin’ By The Lake
Coeur d’Alene
Words & Stitches
TheSlowQuilter
Pig Tales and Quilts
All Thingz Sewn
Monday, September 8
Quilting Quietly
Creatin’ in the Sticks
Procrastination Queen
Lovelli Quilts
Cherry Blossoms
Tuesday, September 9
Just Let Me Quilt
Marjorie’s Busy Corner
The Quilting Queen Online Blog
Marla’s Crafts
K and S Sweets and Stitching
Wednesday, September 10
Secretly Stitching
Buzzing and Bumbling
Quilt n Queen
Quilted Delights
Thursday, September 11
Susie’s World
Needled Mom
Cate’s Linens
How ART you?
I Like To QuiltBlog
Friday, September 12
Sunshine-quilting
Sew Peace to Peace
MoosestashQuilting
More Stars in Comanche
Living With Purpose
Monday, September 15
I Piece 2-Mary
Till We Quilt Again
Vroomans Quilts
Nini and the Sea
Seams To Be Sew
Tuesday, September 16
Life, quilts and a cat too
Meadowbrook
Apple Avenue Quilts
Just Keep Swimming
Patchwork Sampler
Sew We Quilt
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Quilt Design a Day featured on Sew Mama Sew
There are a series of interviews about Quilt Design a Day (Qdad) on the Sew Mama Sew blog: Amy Gunson of Badskirt, Anne Sullivan of Play-Crafts, Michelle Wilkie from Factotum of Arts and Stacey Day of Stacey in Stitches. Amy is featuring her first pattern and a giveaway. I really enjoy designing for Qdad, it is daily practice for my creative ‘muscle’ and a wonderful, supportive community.
When I first started designing daily I was not sure that I would be able to keep it up, and I was afraid that my designs would not be ‘good enough.’ Now with a portfolio of more than 120 designs behind me, I still feel that fear, but now I know that I can use it to design and quilt. There are stages we all go through as we design daily:
Fear–Can I do it? Will it be good enough? Will others like my designs?
Boredom–What, didn’t I see that rock/door/ice cream before???? We joke about seeing the rock/door/ice cream before, yet we still design. Purple again?!?!?! We don’t always like the palettes, but that is part of the challenge. It has helped me to design in spite of my color ‘allergies.’
Search for additional challenge–trying new software (purchasing new hardware just to try out new software, lol.), learning new functions in our design software, designing in a series, designing on a theme and designing with a particular block. For example Anne Sullivan’s Alien Flora, and Amy Gunson’s Woven Slashes series. Recently a longarming friend challenged me to design several designs using the same block. I’m now halfway through my week of designing with the same block. Come back on Friday to see a slideshow of my designs with the Santa Fe block and for my first giveaway.
Linking up with Anything Goes Monday and Patchwork Times’ Design Wall Monday
Have a quilty day!
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Designing Starlight on Water with EQ7 Serendipity, part 2
In part 1, I discussed how I took the inspiration photograph from Design Seeds, drew a block, and then created 8 different blocks with EQ7’s Block>Serendipity>Kaleidoscope. I chose to add 4 of those blocks to my Sketchbook:
Next I thought that I would like a compass rose-type star as the center of my design. Individual blocks can be set into stars using EQ7’s Block>Serendipity>Fancy Star Block.
I chose the first block from the Kaleidoscope, see image above, indicated by the turquoise selection box on the left of the Create a Star dialogue box. I checked Add a background patch, selected 8 points, and slid the slider bar until the star was almost to the perimeter of the background patch. Last, I clicked the Add to Sketchbook button.
I chose to place these blocks in a Quilt>New>On point quilt. The Layout was 6×6 12 inch blocks. I usually add a 1/2 inch border to all of my designs, indicating the binding. I recolored several blocks to get the color placement and progression which felt ‘rippley’ to me.
Here are some additional quilts which I have designed using EQ7’s Block>Serendipity>Kaleidoscope:
The next step in the process is to draw the files into a vector drawing program and then prepare the fabric for laser cutting. Stay tuned…
Have a quilty day!
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Design Wall Monday
In honor of our nation’s birthday last Friday here are some of my red, white, and blue designs.
Have a quilty day!!
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Using EQ7’s Serendipity to Design Original Blocks, part 2
Today I would like to show you some more quilts which I designed with the help of EQ7’s Block>Serendipity>Shrink and Flip. You can find part 1 of the tutorial here. In the galleries found below the first image is always the original block and the following blocks are the combinations from Shrink and Flip, used in the quilt design and numbered to reflect the set of flags in the Shrink and Flip dialog box.
I took the “Palm” block in EQ7 and rearranged it for the following quilt design.
I find that by mixing and remixing the combinations in the Shrink and Flip dialog box I discover new blocks and fun new ways to arrange blocks. Many times the combinations are unexpected and beautiful. I hope you discover something new when you play with Shrink and Flip.
For the following quilt, I recolored some of the patches in each block once it was set into the quilt and I also darkened the background.
Finally here is the Orange Slice design which I showed you in part 1 of the tutorial:
Spend some time to play around with this neat feature!
Lovelli Quilts 