After a short break from Quilt Design a Day to deal with a multitude of small homegrown emergencies and school activities, I’m posting regularly again. Our challenge photo inspiration palettes are now provided by our members. How exciting!! It is so wonderful to have a variety of inspiration. Thank you!! I will be contributing photos in December, I’m already thinking about ideas. Here are some of my designs from the past week:
Have a quilty day!
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
I feel so grateful toward my other QDaD participants–they have been so generous toward me and my designs. When I started Quilt Design a Day, I didn’t think I would be able design each and every day. However, setting aside 15 to 20 minutes each day to design has increased my creativity, my commitment to my business, and my productivity. Take a look at the Quilt Design a Day page on facebook. Here is a slideshow of my July designs:
Come back on Friday when I will (finally) give away the Travelling Stash Box.
A friend of mine was talking about my designs at dinner a couple of weeks ago and she challenged me to take one block design and use it in several quilt designs. I’ve really appreciated it when other designers on qdad (Quilt Design a Day) have done this. The slide show above shows my designs for the week, the block in each one is the Santa Fe block.
According to Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, this block design was first printed in the Ladies Arts catalogue, Quilt Patterns: Patchwork and Applique, published in 1922. The seems complicated in that there are 77 pieces in it. However, it can be pieced using beginner/advanced beginner skills. Next week I’ll show you how to piece it to ensure accuracy.
In the mean time, I promised a giveaway today, and there will be one next Friday as well. Next week the giveaway will be the Traveling Stash Box #5, it had a little adventure on its way to me, involving mis-deliveries, confused possessions, etc. However, it is in my hands now and I have added some treasures to it. I will give it away next Friday, so please come back.
Today I will be giving away a jelly roll from Edyta Sitar’s new collection at Moda fabrics. The colors in this collection would be so pretty in the Santa Fe Block, in fact I will be using this collection in my tutorials for the block next week. To enter the giveaway please leave a comment below, I will choose a winner on Monday at 12:00 pm, Central time. I can only ship to addresses in the United States.
Have a quilty weekend!
In memory of all who have lost their lives this week due to violence.
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!
Designing Starlight on Water started with a Design Seeds photo and palette on July 12.
I immediately thought that the white boat was a striking part of the photo, and I knew that it should play a role in the quilt design. I also thought that the ripples in the water added a subtle texture to the photograph. My first block was a very simplified EQ7 applique drawing of those inspirations: 
I couldn’t stop there, because the drawing didn’t express the calm I felt from the photo. I started playing with the block in EQ7’s Block>Serendipity>Kaleidoscope. 
The above screenshot shows EQ7’s ‘Create Kaleidoscope from Block’ dialogue box. I have 3 different boat blocks on the left, because I tweaked the original block a bit before I was ready to play with Kaleidoscope. On the right are 4 different triangle subsections of the selected block. The selected subsection, marked by a turquoise box and multiplied by 8, makes up the center block. By selecting different subsections, I can get 8 different blocks.
When I find a block I like I click the ‘Add to Sketchbook’ button in the dialogue box. Sometimes the kaleidoscope is really beautiful, sometimes I like the shapes, and sometimes I choose not to add it to my Sketchbook. Here are the blocks I chose for Starlight on Water:
I further edited the colors in the blocks once I started putting them into the quilt. Creating the center star used another Serendipity function which I will show you tomorrow. The blocks will be constructed using fusible raw edge applique. Have a quilty day!
Thank you so much, Beth from Plum and June for organizing the hop. I have had so much fun exploring everyone’s blogs and learning their blogging and quilting tips. I love quilting and have been quilting for roughly 26 years, with time off for children and travel. I turned ‘pro’ two years ago when I purchased ‘Sven’, my beautiful teal Statler Stitcher. I love to longarm quilt and will happily quilt all day and into the night for my clients. In addition to longarm quilting, I appraise quilts professionally. I also love to design quilts, and thanks to Quilt design a day (Qdad) I have been turning out 2 quilt designs every day and I have just earned my 60 day badge.
I use EQ7 to design and my first tutorial was about designing with EQ7. Here are some of my designs from the month of June:
My quilting tip is to learn something new everyday, it can be something small or something large. Each new technique you learn will help you in the future, often in unpredictable ways. Learning about quilt history will expose you to beautiful quilts and give you ideas to incorporate into the quilts you are sewing today. Every mistake I make, teaches me something new or teaches me to pay attention to something I learned before. Learning keeps me interested even when I am doing tedious work. I decided that this year will be the ‘year of the binding’. I am working hard at improving my bindings and you will see tutorials on bindings throughout the year. In between designing and learning I actually find time to make my own quilts. This year my big ‘finish’ was Pie in the sky, by Kim Diehl. 
I’m still working on my Improv Log Cabin which I started in April during a class by the delightful Jacquie Gering. 
I started blogging by reading as many blogs as I could. I figured out what I liked and what I liked more. I’m still a work in progress. My blogging tip is to write posts ahead of time and schedule them. I started blogging by just jumping in and writing with the lofty goal of writing two posts per week. Then life intervened (doesn’t it always?, lol.) I’m still working at having blogs prepared in advance. There are always new and upcoming blogs. This year, the New Quilt Blog Hop has four dates, June 4th, June 11th, July 9th and July 16th. On each of those dates there are two groups of bloggers, with each blogger linking to the other group. Have fun, explore, and learn something new by visiting them, here are some of the bloggers participating today:
Sharon @ Fabrics and Flowers
Serena @ Sew Giving
Carmit @ Quilting Rainbows
Jehn @ Jehnny And The Boys
Jenny @ Jack’s Room
Deborah @ Sunshine Through The Rain
Jennifer @ A Quarter Inch From The Edge
Jane @ Where Jane Creates
Carla @ Granny Maud’s Girl
Have a quilty day!
In honor of our nation’s birthday last Friday here are some of my red, white, and blue designs.
Have a quilty day!!
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 