Sunday sketch #109

I’ve been trying to limit my use of EQ8 to design features that I can’t manage easily with hand-sketching: namely, curves and colour. This week’s design combines these features to create one of my favourite things: flowers!

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #109

I love these retro flowers. I tried a lot of different colour combinations, but the yellow just popped. This warm yellow makes me so happy.

This design could be made into a quilt using the drunkard’s path template. Each block (comprising most of a single flower) is 12 drunkard’s path units and 4 solid squares (although you could make 4 drunkard’s path units in a single colour, just to get that lovely curved seam).

Sunday sketch #108

I try to find inspiration everywhere. When I see an interesting shape or feature, I’ll take a photo of it on my phone or sketch it in my dot pad. I’ve also got a whole Pinterest board of quilty inspiration, along with a folder of screenshots on my laptop.

Recently when reading a New York Times Style Magazine article on couture week in Paris (why not!), I spotted a beautiful design in a short veil in Christian Dior’s autumn 2018 haute couture collection:

Screen Shot 2018-07-18 at 8.50.56 PM

Such a simple idea, yet so stunning. I started playing around with it in Electric Quilt 8. I didn’t recreate it exactly, but used the idea as the basis of a cross-based, criss-crossed design. Here’s what I came up with:

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #108-1

In the original, the diamond shapes have a cross at every corner, whereas mine have only 2. It took me awhile to tweak the block design, but I wanted to make sure that the diagonals lined up properly, creating straight lines from one block to the next.

The design works in the reverse colourway too (and at a slightly smaller scale):

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #108-2

Isn’t it lovely?

These blocks could be made using a variety of squares, rectangles and triangles. Paper piecing might help to get the diagonal strips just right.

Sunday sketch #107

I think this is the first time that I’ve featured curves in my Sunday sketches. And it only took 107 weeks…!

I mentioned last week that there are a few things that Electric Quilt 8 is particular good at. There’s one more: curves! I can’t do curves with a pen and paper… at least, not very well. But they’re a cinch with EQ8.

Geometriquilt: Sunday sketch #107

This is one of several curvy designs that I’ve created recently. They all tend to use the double drunkard’s path block, which I really like. I want to try making one of them soon, but did I mention that I’ve only sewn one (single) drunkard’s path block in my whole quilting career…? It wasn’t pretty. I’ll need a lot of practice if I want to get better. Luckily I bought a 7″ template from Papper, Sax, Sten, which should help!