What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Any pieced block constructed of squares and rectangles can be used as  a quilt layout in Electric Quilt. This series of designs doesn’t have my usual variety of blocks as I wanted to concentrate  on  making best use of the assorted block shapes.
 

It has been about 12 months since I played in this part of  my favourite toy, and I think I should start more projects with a wider variety of blocks, and irregular layouts.

Of these two, I like the first one, and love the second!

Electric Quilt 8 will turn a pieced block into a quilt setting if all the shapes in the block are straight lines. If you use a square block in a long rectangle the design is stretched to fit the shape, which is sometimes a stunning result, sometimes not so good.

Love the open spaces to show off the quilting in the second design.

Lovely, and interesting.

These quilt designs started with a layout created with a pieced block with just squares and rectangles. In a real quilt the background colours could be the same all over, or could use pale, low contrast fabrics to show the original block in large scale.

Wow!

Love both of these, my favourite is the one above.

One of the most interesting things I found through playing with Electric Quilt is using blocks as quilt settings.

The most limiting part of the process was the number of suitable blocks made up of squares and rectangles, but that is easily solved by drawing blocks with just right angles. Vertical and horizontal straight lines only.

After a very short time of drawing the basic blocks I had a collection of 50 plus blocks, most of which would probably not make great blocks, but just might work to make some very interesting quilt layouts

Dainty.

A little bit more colour, but still dainty.

Oh, so dainty! Love it!

Love the second one too, partly because only the background fabric has been changes for some blocks.

Electric Quilt allows users to design their own layouts by using pieced blocks using squares and rectangles as the block layout. I spent about a week designing possible layouts as simple pieced blocks, just for fun, and most of them are still untried as quilt layouts.

At least today’s designs have used two of them!

Mmm … nice one.

I love playing with quilt designs with different shades of background fabrics instead of sashing, and it works especially well when the blocks are assorted shapes.

A block design made up of squares and rectangles can be used as layouts for whole quilts, and I had fun designing a whole heap of blocks especially for this purpose. This project file is all basic pieced blocks used for the layouts.

I have used low contrast backgrounds for some of the blocks to make use of the block shapes to add a different design feature to the designs.

I like both of these, but like the first more than the second.

A few applique blocks, applique border, and lots of space for quilting to shine. I love the low contrast changes of background colour for some of the applique blocks.

More applique in both blocks and borders, but still room for some quilting!

Love both of these.

Not sure that I got the background colour change right, but I like the design.

Deleted the contrast background in some places, but not all in teh second design.

Must do better tomorrow!

Love the idea of creating a design by using different background fabrics, and designs like the ones here show why!

I like the first one best, but I have learned something from the second one … use finest, dotted line available in Electric Quilt for the best quilting lines when added to a blog. The quilting lines are fine when they are printed out, but tend to look splodgy when uploaded.

Interesting effect of using low contrast background behind applique designs, made more interesting in a custom design arrangement of blocks.

I love the second one!

The designs today are each based on two different pieced block designs made up of squares and rectangles.

I like the second one best … though after another coffee I may change my mind.

This project file is an experiment with non-conventional layouts, or perhaps testing boundaries within the border of a quilt. I am not wrapped with my contrast choice, but very interested in the layouts.

Let me be honest, I am always interested in quilt designs which include both applique and quilting motifs.

The design above uses one of the features of Electric Quilt, where a block using only squares and rectangles can be used as a quilt layout.

In this case this is how you could make a ‘wholecloth’ quilt from two different fabrics when you can’t get to the quilt shop and want to start a new project now!

I usually place pieced or applique blocks in the squares and rectangles, but this one just has quilting motifs based on applique blocks.

I love the idea … one worth playing with some more.

The second design uses a different layout, also ...

My virtually quilted designs are a great way to show how applique designs can become quilting motifs, but are a little misleading, because I do not add the boring filler designs, partly because it takes as long to fill in the background as it does to quilt it for real, and all those lines tend to hide the motifs, and sometimes even the applique or pieced block designs. So when there are empty spaces in my virtual designs, you have to imagine you are looking at a real quilt with cross hatching in those blank spaces done in a matching ...