Festive Friday

Doodles and plans

We’ve arrived at November again, this time with an unplanned hiccup in updating our Electric Doodles page and missing almost the whole of October. So now we are properly caught up and the page updated to November, the tech. section of the Rural Office has been formally reprimanded and threatened with removal of biscuit rights. . .

Our Tile Tuesday posts will continue through November and then in December we will have Festive Fridays to reflect the season. We have a number of things lined up for this blog in (gulp) 2022 but we are sworn to secrecy until January rolls around. In the meantime there is much clearing and sorting and re-arranging going on throughout the C&B Empire – from C&B Towers to the Rural Office and the Overseas Office sewing machines are being serviced, supplies checked, shelves dusted and re-stocked, projects reviewed, assessed and progressed.

Happy stitching!

New Year, new doodles

Starting this New Year with a fresh set of EQ doodles – this month the emphasis is on applique and a block that is one quarter of a full pattern.  Find it in your EQ Block Library as “Arabia”.

 

This is the EQ default colouring –

So, 4 blocks put together look like this –

 

and an adjusted monochrome version looks like this –

 

At this point we are strongly reminded of encaustic floor tiles, and Barbara’s fingers are starting to twitch, feeling that an applique project may be imminent.  Dialling down the contrast led to this –

And then, inevitably, we felt obliged to combine these two versions in alternating settings – the excitement proved too much and something went uncorrected …

stayed uncorrected in this one ….

and still uncorrected in this one!  The joy of EQ8 is that no fabric is harmed in the design process and there’s no reverse stitching.

Download templates for Arabia 6 inch block to make a set of 4 blocks in your own arrangement (4 blocks will finish at a healthy 12inches square).  Download a colouring sheet here January quilt to colour to try out colour combinations before cutting into precious fabric.

With our best wishes for a year full of stitching

Chris & Barbara

Scrappy Doodle Sunday

Our August EQ Doodle block is Birds in the Air. There are so many ways to use colour and scraps in this block – and its great for using up those left-over half-square triangles too. So whether you have plenty of the same colours, or not much of anything you can make lots of blocks and put them together. Ideally for each block you need a consistent ‘background’ colour – it needn’t be the same fabric, just the same shade of the same colour (more or less) – a variety of whites, or creams, or greys perhaps; or go darker and use navy, black, or dark grey with brights or pastels.

And once you have made lots of blocks you can put them together and twirl them around and make a variety of patterns. You’ll find lots more ideas on the EQ Doodles page (in greyscale).

 

If you want to have a go at making the block you can download the rotary cutting measurements for a 6 inch block here courtesy of Electric Quilt (EQ).

Scrappy Sunday

It’s not a finish but it’s a top!  The scrappy Friendship Star/Nine Patch blocks Barbara made are sashed and bordered and moved to the “await quilting” pile.  This was a really quick make and a great side adventure using some of those 2 1/2inch squares that were cut at the beginning of March.

 

It looks like we are going to turn our attention away from squares for a while.  We’ve had a few high-level virtual consultations over the last week (HQ of course is closed at the moment so everything has been screen to screen and bring your own caffeine..) and we think it might be time to feature traditional blocks which work well with scraps.  One of our go-to references for scrappy and traditional is “Great Scrap Bag Quilts” by Jan Halgrimson – here’s the sideways version

We’ve mentioned Jan’s books in earlier scrappy posts – our copies are VERY well thumbed and have been a source of much inspiration over the years.  Here’s a peep at one page (P.85) which caught our eye – the block is Scrap Bag Star.

This is a 12inch block and we are trying not to focus too much on that instruction that says “cut 24 light, 84 dark” – that’s a LOT of pieces for a 12inch block!  But it would make a reasonable dent in a stack of very small scraps ….  The lovely thing about the early books of patchwork patterns is that they are black & white only and you can use your imagination to put colour in them.  And the equally lovely thing is that we now have EQ8 (and its predecessors) to draw, colour and make virtual quilts with these blocks.  Here’s our first EQ8 stab at Scrap Bag Star –

Then it’s hard to resist clicking on the random recolour tool –

We’re off to get more scrappy inspiration from Ms Halgrimson – tune in next week for June’s EQ Doodles, Free Pattern Friday and more scrappiness on Sunday.

Happy stitching!

 

Christmas Doodles

The December Doodles are here on our Doodles page and Barbara was feeling a little festive when she started colouring these in! The blocks used are Rolling Star and Five-Patch Chain.

You can download a colouring sheet to design your quilts – festive or otherwise – here.

If you head over to Meadowside Designs you will find the templates for a 10 inch Rolling Star block and the cutting instructions for a 10 inch Five-Patch Chain block in case you fancy recreating your design in real fabric.

Flashback Friday

Flashback to July 2015 (seems only moments ago!) – and our EQ Doodles.  There are rumours that the first “quilt” below might be featured in a class at The Corner Patch in 2018…  fabric has been seen collecting itself into small heaps. And possibly the third “quilt” down too – it could fit the request for a class project that includes applique.  It might be time for a little caffeine first!

Flashback Friday

We both have a fondness for a good tiled floor – and being based in Staffordshire, home of Minton tiles, we get to see plenty of examples.  Sometimes our EQ Doodles reflect this as you can see above.  Here’s a floor we both pass on our way to high level meetings at HQ –

 

Flashback Friday

 

Today’s Flashback is to the Saturday class Double Delight –  a whole roomful of small quilt tops got made on the day.  The pattern started out as one of our EQ Doodles…..

New Doodles

If it’s the start of a month it must be time to update our EQ Doodles page – and we have!  Click on the tab above to find out what’s on offer this month.

We have featured our favourite quilt program Electric Quilt via a set of monthly Doodles for several years now (probably too many to count! – Chris) and from time to time we have a trawl through the files and say “Oh I really like that one”  “Must make that one” “That could be a pattern” and, well you get the idea.  Our latest brainwave (under the influence of caffeine) is to maybe post some former doodles, maybe some class pics, maybe “other stuff” in the form of a Flashback Friday post.   We may even begin doing that this month!!  Stay tuned……