April doodles

We’ve chosen “Bluebell” from the EQ Block Library for our April doodling – here’s the default colouring of this floral block –

This would be a great block to foundation piece with lots of options for graphic arrangements. Here’s just a few block colouring choices to start off –

On to multiple blocks! Begin with that default colouring with all blocks following the same orientation –

The urge to start twirling blocks around was too great to resist – the results were maybe slightly predictable but we thought they looked really good!

So we’re off to choose blue fabrics from our stashes. You can download a Bluebell quilt to colour here while you are deciding which arrangement to make!

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March Doodles

A mathematical title for this month’s block – Four times Nine, according to the EQ Block Library. This is the EQ default colouring –

Switching in some green, add more pink, taking out some of the green and putting a different blue back in – we never tire of playing with EQ!

And on to some straight-set quilts, default colouring first, finishing with a mixture on point with a little magic infill courtesy of EQ.

Download a colouring sheet here to plan your own Four times Nine quilt. Happy stitching & colouring!

Traditional colours

Red and green are often first colour choices for anything to do with the festive season and, earlier this month, we showed some of our 2022 Doodle blocks in red/green colourway. And one thing leads to another so easily in EQ8 – from random to almost-organised.

Stellar Sampler

It’s nearly the end of the year (how did that happen?) and we’ve reached the last few of our stellar blocks. These are more eight-pointed stars, somewhat akin to the Blazing Star blocks from last month. You can download the 12 inch patterns and blocks to colour for all the blocks featured today here – it is free remember)

We start with Key West

If you divide that up a bit you get Morning Star (we have dubbed this Morning Star 2 in the download – you’ll see why in a moment)

Take the centre points of Key West and add pointed corners to make April Star

If you then take those points and divide them you get Shadow Star

Divide just the corner points of April Star to make Star and Cone

Or make the centre points shorter (and thus fatter at the end) to make Guiding Star

Then we come to our other Morning Star – a Blazing Star / April Star / Key West with added bits!

But we couldn’t leave our stellar year without reminding you of the Tangled Star block

You can find a pattern to make a runner using this block over in our Payhip shop along with many other patterns for runners, quilts and table toppers.

We hope you have enjoyed our exploration of some of the multitude of star blocks – and please download the patterns (they are free) and play with the ‘block to colour’ pages – split up the various bits of the stars and design your own extra stellar blocks.

Over on Meadowside

All this year our sister blog has been posting six-inch blocks each week as we work our way steadily through an alphabet soup of designs.

We started back in January with an applique letter A and an Apple Pie

By April we had reached F and Flower Petal

In July it was M and a Merry Kite

And now at the beginning of December we have reached W and a found a Wandering Lover.

There’s still three more letters to go before the end of the year! If you downloaded all the block patterns you would have a total of 97 blocks plus 26 applique letters by New Year – enough to make a sampler quilt to fit on top of a bed (approx 60 inches square if you made 100 blocks).

December doodle

No featured block for our Doodles this month but a red/green re-colouring of some of the 2022 blocks to reflect a festive theme. In no particular order –

Stellar Sampler

Browsing through the star blocks in BlockBase and Electric Quilt Chris came across a star called Star and Dot which looks a bit like a Blazing Star with bits missing. Further browsing produced a few more stars in the same family.

Let’s start with Star and Dot

Then add a few lines to make New Star

Or add spiked corners to make Blazing Star

Split those corners to make another version of Blazing Star

Change the corner and centre to make the Emerald block

Or add in lots of extras to make Optical Illusion

You can download the cutting instructions for all these blocks (12 inches) and blank blocks to colour here. You could also use the blank Star and Dot block to design a block of your own.

Stellar Sampler

We’ve another family of blocks to explore this month – the Eight-Pointed Stars, based on the LeMoyne Star

You can download cutting instructions for 12 inch blocks and blank blocks to play with here.

Taking Lemoyne Star as a starting point you could add some extra little points – we called this one Double Star

But those corner squares looked a bit plain so we added four-patches and, with our usual panache, called it Double Star Variation

Or you could start dividing the star points – to give a block often called Blazing Star

Another division of the star points and turning the corner squares into half-square triangles gives us EQ Star

The blocks above are all included in the download but there are lots of other variations to the basic star – dividing the star points in half lengthwise and adding half-square triangles in the corners gives us a block often called Silver and Gold

Using stripes – or strips – to make the star points can make Spiderweb Star

or Wrapped Star

If you go searching you will find dozens of other variations like these, or you can draw your own using the blank blocks in the download – the templates included should be enough to make many of the variations.

Meadowside Sampler blocks

Over on our sister blog our wander through the block alphabet has reached S. So far we have posted six-inch patterns for Schoolgirl’s Puzzle

Shoofly (and Snowball – just a different way to colour the same block)

Simple Basket

Six-Grid Chain

and (as it’s October) two Spiderweb blocks.

There will be another two blocks next Saturday before we explore blocks beginning with T.

EQ Doodles -October

We slip into autumn with the spotlight on Pinwheel Square –

Scroll through the blocks and straight quilt settings below and enjoy the difference that simple changes of value or placement of value can make.

It’s always interesting to try out combinations of different versions of the same block –

And sometimes you just have to turn it all on point!

You’ll find a free pdf download with block to colour, rotary cutting directions and templates here.