Fancy Dresden Plate 9

Once again the vertical and horizontal petals are longer than the others but this time they have rounded ends. The smaller petals are a mix of rounded and pointed.

EQ has decided that this block needs to be split into four triangles (or the ‘anchor lines’ need to go to the corners). This gives us added colouring opportunities. To make the block you would applique the completed plate onto a Quarter-Square Triangle background rather than a plain square or a 4-patch.

Bur let’s start with a plain and dark background

Now change the position of the petal colours

and then add the two colour backround

This is an almost 3D effect so what happens if we make a quilt of this colouring and turn alternate blocks?

You can download the templates here to make this block at 12 inches.

Coming soon will be a colouring ‘book’ with all the blocks so far so you can play with your own colour (and background design) ideas.

 

 

 

December EQ Doodles

As many of you know we try every month to put up some EQ doodles on our sister website chrisandbarbaraquilts. And from time to time we try to remember to supplement those doodles here with instructions or templates to make the block or blocks featured.

Barbara was feeling a little festive at the beginning of the month and has come up with two blocks – Five-Patch Chain and Rolling Star which she has combined to make a series of interesting designs. Here’s one of them  and you will find plenty of others on our Doodles page.

You can download the templates for a 10 inch Rolling Star block here and the rotary cutting measurements for a 10 inch Five-Patch Chain here. Over on the Chris and Barbara blog you can download a colouring sheet for a quilt – which you can print out as many times as you wish, cut a few up, re-arrange the blocks and design your own doodle.

Fancy Dresden Plate 8

Another Fancy Plate for you to play with this week – still the same long petals but another change to the smaller ones.

Yet again you can change the colours and emphasis around – make the centre a different colour, fussy-cut your prints, use up your scraps . . .

Download the templates for a 12 inch block here.

Fancy Dresden Plate 7

If last week’s was 6 (and I didn’t number it) then we must be on 7 this week. Similar to last week’s with the longer petals but the smaller petals have changed shape.

Once again I have had fun with colouring in EQ and playing at changing the emphasis slightly.

Download the templates for a 12 inch block here.

Yet another Fancy Dresden Plate

A slight change to the Dresden Plates now – the horizontal and vertical petals are longer than the others.

This week’s plate has pointed main petals and all the others are rounded. It still has 16 petals in total and a small(ish) centre. You can have a bit of fun with the colours and with ‘fussy-cutting’ your prints –

Download the templates to make a 12inch block here.

(with apologies for the late posting – sometimes life intervenes with best laid plans!)

Fancy Dresden Plate 5

Total failure of imagination in naming these blocks – here’s Fancy plate 5. Like last week this one has rounded petals for the vertical/horizontal ones. The small petals though are ‘dished’ rather than straight, curved or pointed as we’ve had before.

This makes a less round plate – perhaps more of a flower or a frilly plate. You can download the templates to make a 12 inch block here. As before I have reduced the number of templates as many of them are the same, just reversed – remember for the eight petals that you  need to cut 4 with the template right way up (on the wrong side of the fabric) and 4 with the template wrong way up.

Playing with colour again, let’s see what difference changing the centre to match the different sets of petals makes

and a dark background with darker petals too.

or how about a bright one?

If you have downloaded all the templates for these Fancy plates so far then you can have a little bit of fun designing your own Fancy plate by swapping the petal shapes around between the blocks.

Another set of Fancy plates starts next week.

EQ Doodles

Over on the Chris & Barbara blog not only are we looking at scrappy designs but we also do quilt doodles with the aid of Electric Quilt each month. In November’s doodles Barbara has used some frame blocks and looks at how effective they are for showing off those prints that you can’t bear to cut up into small pieces.

I have drawn them out in Electric Quilt (EQ8) and recoloured them so they look very different from Barbara’s colourings. Over on the EQ Doodles page you can download a colouring sheet to design your own colourways. However you may fancy actually making quilts with these blocks having seen some of the ones Barbara has designed. I have done both rotary cutting measurements and templates to make 9inch blocks for you to download. The measurements may be a little unusual as the blocks are all based on different grids – 4-patch, 5-patch and 7-patch – which made it tricky to choose a suitable size! I thought it was worth giving it a go however as the quilts Barbara has shown that use more than one of these blocks looked so interesting – for example –