Yule Glow, or You’ll Glow!
This is Yule Glow, my latest design for McCall’s Quilting and their Nov/Dec ’19 issue, on newsstands now.
Yule Glow, designed and made by Diane Harris. Appears in McCall’s Quilting Nov/Dec ’19.
Posts Tagged ‘EQ8’
The Great Pumpkin Backstory and Giveaway
Last year I had this idea: Design a Christmas quilt with giant candy canes. The candy canes would be so big they’d cover the entire quilt. I nestled them together and topped them off with a Starlite™ mint.
Prancer’s Peppermints, designed and made by Diane Harris, appeared in Quilty Nov/Dec. 2018
Quilty magazine published them as Prancer’s Peppermints in the Nov/Dec ’18 issue.
Diane’s giant pineapple “Welcome” quilt, click for free instructions!
Then I thought it might be fun to make a giant pineapple quilt, and that’s how Welcome was born.
Churn Dash Remix with Stash Bandit, Part 3
The back story: I was away from my machine for four weeks this summer so I played with the traditional Churn Dash in Electric Quilt. I called it the Churn Dash Remix.
See Part 1 of Churn Dash Remix
See Part 2 of Churn Dash Remix
We’ve played with block proportions, now let’s mess around with settings. A setting is just how blocks will be put together. A setting can be blocks arranged in horizontal rows or on point, blocks with sashing or without, blocks arranged vertically or randomly—there are endless variations.
Churn Dash Remix with Stash Bandit, Part 2
While I was away from my studio for the arrival of new grandbabies, I dreamed up the Churn Dash Remix so that I could play with virtual quilt designs in Electric Quilt design software. I used a basic traditional Churn Dash quilt block as my starting point. If you missed it, check out Part 1.
In the first part, we left the block proportions alone and just played with the lights and darks plus some scrappy variations. Pretty entertaining! But now we’re getting to the really fun stuff: altering the size of the block’s grid.
Changing It Up: From Christmas to Industry
I posted an image of my recent modern Christmas wreath quilt on Instagram, and a follower named Karen saw “urban-industrial style Christmas.” What a great description!
Oh, Christmas Wreath by Diane Harris; quilted by Julie Lechner @beenquiltin
Her thoughts moved me to play around with this design and purposely go for an industrial look. So I moved away from Christmas entirely, to these possibilities.
A little bit different, but it still feels like the same quilt. Sashing is wider and all of the background and the border is one color.
Here I moved to a darker background color. I kind of like this idea. In terms of fabric, I’d use a lot of variety in the Bow Ties. (Ha, they don’t even look like Bow Ties now!)
More playing around. I’m not sure how effective this really is. But you never know until you try, so I don’t rule anything out when I’m experimenting, especially if it’s just in EQ. Even in fabric, play is the name of the game.
Whoa. This happened by accident! The background is the same color as one of the Bow Ties, so that piecing disappears and they look like weird C’s. Now we’re getting somewhere. In reality you wouldn’t actually piece the C’s, you could just use a solid patch in the same fabric as the background. I love this one, and surprisingly, it looks Christmas-y to me once more.
I had one more thought. I changed the gray to another green.
Like I said, you never know until you mess around!
A note about Electric Quilt design software: I resisted upgrading to EQ8 from EQ7 because I thought I didn’t have time to learn a new program. But when I did upgrade, I was blown away by how easy and intuitive it is. I spent almost zero time learning EQ8 because everything felt natural and logical. I love it. If you’re interested in designing quilts, you should get it. Well worth the investment!
Today, I wish you the courage, the curiosity and the commitment to play.
Let’s Talk Quilts! Does your quilt group need a speaker for 2019 or 2020? I’m booking entertaining, energizing, inspiring trunk shows now.