Yesterday’s doodles over on our sister site – chrisand barbaraquilts – have moved onto a more festive look with holly and a peony (not sure peonies are in flower right now, but fabric ones can be!)
These are the default colours from EQ
but as was suggested yesterday you can recolour them to suit your mood, decor, or the season
If you want to make the blocks you can download the instructions – templates for 6, 9 and 12 inch blocks – here.
It can be fun to play with with blocks by adding a few lines in EQ – no one says you actually have to make them but if you do want to make this block you can download the templates for 6 inch and 9 inch blocks here. As we have looked at the Big and Little Trees block earlier I have been playing with this one – just one result today but you can play along by drawing lines on the block to colour included in the download earlier in the month.
This is just a simple alteration as I have just drawn a couple of diagonal lines across the big tree and straight ones across the little tree. I could have done it the other way about or done both the same but I thought I would leave those to your imagination or let you try it on paper.
You can use both the blocks in a quilt or in a table runner – it can be effective to flip a block or two as well.
I have a new computer and thus a new download of EQ and haven’t yet played with the settings – the black ‘seam’ lines look quite heavy in this mock-up and have made the block look like stained glass, so there’s another idea for you!
Our block this month over on chrisandbarbaraquilts is called Big and Little Trees.
These are the default colourings of the block in EQ but we can play around with those a little – here we have just changed the greens and added in a few seasonal fabrics – as it is that time of year we have assumed these trees are conifers / Christmas trees. But they could be any tree so you could make your trees more autumnal and colour them in shades of yellow, orange and russet.
You can download the templates for 6 inch and 9 inch blocks here as well as colouring pages for the block and a quilt.
The EQ Doodle block this month on our sister site – chrisandbarbaraquilts – is Birds in the Air. But, just as we did with last month’s block, you can split this one into four as well and get two potentially interesting new ‘blocks’ to play with (as well as one not quite so interesting one).
If we put four of the first of these new blocks together and turn them around these are a few of the ideas EQ came up with
And then the second one gives us these possibilities (among others).
And then we decided to try distorting the original block by exaggerating the triangles
then put a few together to see what a quilt might look like
And we didn’t even start on recolouring the blocks . . .
If you want to make the original block, the quarter blocks or the distorted block, or just colour some quilts you can download all the cutting instructions and colouring pages here.
This month’s block over on chrisandbarabaraquilts is Peach Cobbler. You can download the instructions for both 6 inch and 9 inch blocks here.
This are the default colours and greyscale block from EQ
And then we asked EQ to recolour the block at random. It gave us these (among many others).
This month’s doodle block is Electric Fan – we’re rather hoping it is not so hot that we need to use one of these too often this month. These are the greyscale and default colourings in EQ8.
You can download the instructions to make either an 8 inch or a 12 inch block here. Electric Quilt also came up with some different colours for the block.
You will find more ideas on our sister blog – chrisandbarbaraquilts.
Our doodle over on ChrisandBarbaraQuilts this month features a block called Illusion.
This is the original default colouring and greyscale from EQ and you can download the templates to make 8 inch and 6 inch blocks here along with a block and a quilt to colour in.
A brief play with the EQ magic wand gave us these three different colourings
Which make quite different looking quilts
One of the buttons in EQ8 is ‘Clip and Flip’. This takes a quarter of a block and then flips it in a variety of ways. So going back to our favourite block – Ohio Star – what happens if we use this magic button? These are the first four
But do these look any good in a quilt? Here’s some 4 x 4 block settings to give you an idea
They do look a bit the same. But what if we combine them in pairs?
Slightly more interesting. I think it could be even more interesting with a different block or more adventurous colouring, and also more random turns and flips of the quarter as I didn’t get round to using the random button. Something for another time perhaps. Meanwhile if you want to play with a quarter Ohio Star you can download the rotary cutting instructions for a nine block.
Over on our sister blog (chrisandbarbaraquilts) our June blog for the doodles is Windmill.
EQ came up with a lot more ideas for colours when we played with the magic wand and here’s just three of them.
If you’d like to make this block or just play with colouring it and/or the quilt you can download it here.
I’m still playing with EQ and Ohio Star blocks this month. Some time ago I made a couple of quilts putting smaller blocks into the plain corner and centre squares. When I made the second quilt I decided to turn the centre slightly and add four more stars.
But we could use Sawtooth stars – first putting them into an Ohio Star block
and then putting Ohio Stars into a Sawtooth Star (and turning the quilts on point as well).
But why stick with boring squares? You can make the block as a diamond instead
and use it in Baby (Tumbling) Blocks
You can always use one of the Ohio Star Variations and put lots together to make a really complicated looking quilt – these use a 3 x 3 setting of blocks to make quilts about 48 inches square
Or how about 8-Pointed Stars with Ohio Star blocks in the points? Changing the colours in the blocks, or putting 4-patches in the corners and centres, as for the Tumbling Blocks quilt, can change the look of the quilt
If you would like to play with diamond Ohio Stars you can download templates here. The Eight Pointed Stars will finish at about 50 inches square without a border and three Tumbling Block diamonds will make a unit 15.5 x 18 inches
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