New Year, new Doodles

Here’s to a year filled with stitching! and presenting our first Doodles of 2023. The block from the EQ Library is titled Stars & Lilies and this is the default colouring –

Inevitably, we changed the colouring –

and then made further changes –

Instead of exploring changes to the Star & Lilies block any further than this we went straight on to basic quilt settings –

And then a sudden switch to almost monochrome –

By this point we were starting to think of tiled floors and were rummaging through our stashes so we decided to call it a day. But if you want to play with this block and quilt then colouring sheets, rotary cutting measurements and templates for 12 inch blocks are here!

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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.

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.

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.

EQ Doodles – September

We seem to say every year that September has come around very quickly – and every year seems to whizz by very quickly. So it is following this well-established tradition that we welcome you to our September Doodles with the observation that September has indeed come around very quickly! Our featured block is Nine Patch Star –

shown above with the EQ default colouring. And it’s an easy step from a a single block to a straight quilt setting –

We’ve never been able to resist the “what if” factor that is so easy with Electric Quilt – here’s the Nine Patch Star block recoloured to rose –

and a slight tweak –

A second slight tweak –

Another tweak –

Again, a tweak –

Last tweak –

Another of our well-established traditions is to provide you with a free pdf download which has a block to colour, rotary cutting instructions and templates – find it here.

August Doodles

We seem to be on a run of improbably-named blocks for our Doodles and this month is no exception – Sunburst & Mills is the title shown in the EQ8 Library for our featured block. Here’s the default colouring –

Piecing precision called for with this arrangement of diamonds and Flying Geese units but we think it’s well worth the challenge!

First, change the palette to blues –

On to reviewing some straight quilt setting options for the above variations starting with the default block –

No “on point” version this month but you can download a pdf of a block to colour, rotary cutting measurements and templates here. Happy stitching!

July Doodles

We love Nine Patch blocks – and we love stars (as you may have gathered from many of our previous Doodlings. So what could be better than a Nine Patch Star? Here’s a Nine Patch Star straight from the EQ8 Library –

And here are some of our variations, changes and general twiddlings to this block – regular Doodle readers will be well-versed in some of the processes.

And on to setting blocks together into quilts – which one is your favourite?

It’s fascinating to see how different a block can look just by turning it on point! You can download a block to colour, rotary cutting measurements and templates for Nine Patch Star here.

More six inch blocks

Our Saturday Sampler of six-inch blocks over on Meadowside has reached the letter J and this week’s blocks include one called Jewel Star

It really doesn’t look very star like but if you look at the colour versions that EQ and its magic wand came up with and then put sixteen blocks together in a 4 x 4 setting you start seeing stars – but it does depend very much on where the strongest colours are placed and on the contrast between those colours

The design also depends on which blocks you turn, and how far you turn them

That last pair illustrate the importance of where the strongest colours are placed – the centre brown and yellow dominate and the star is almost lost whereas in the pair above the contrast brightness of the yellow highlights the star.

If you fancy having a play with this block you can download the templates and a block to colour from our Meadowside blog.

May’s blocks on Meadowside

Over on Meadowside Designs, as you have probably gathered by now, we are working our way through the alphabet with a sampler series of six-inch blocks. May sees us arrive at H (and later I and even J). This week our H blocks include Hour Glass. There are (literally) dozens of blocks that have been given this name or contain these words. We chose four similar ones to feature on Meadowside

but here’s just a few of the others simply called Hour Glass that we found –

That last one was designed by Carlie Sexton and published in 1928 (Barbara Brackman) and we rather thought some of you might fancy making it, so you can download the templates to make a 12 inch (six inch seemed a little small?) block. It might fit in quite well with some of the other star blocks we are featuring here at Chris & Barbara this year.