Wednesday WOW - May 26

Well, the Hoffman project is finally started.  At least there's a head!

EQ6 and Fabric Selections

Judy at Virtual Quilter has been nagging encouraging me to play with using fabric in EQ6.  I needed to take some time to learn more about the fabric libraries first.

The default fabric selection is kind of tame for me, but I recently learned how to change the default selection, plus how to load a "custom" collection for the project file.  EQ provides a free fabric collection monthly and there are loads of luscious fabrics in each one.

Where to start?  One of my fabric colors is brown.  And one of the monthly collections was - surprise - browns!

 

Wish I could remember who these fabrics are by.  I just wrote down Winter Wonderland. 

And this one is Jungle Brites.  I like this.

The magic wand tool will take the colors you chose and map them to the fabric available in the project.  This can result in some less - er - eye-popping combinations.  Like this hot pink/bright yellow colored example.

Don't need sunshades for this, do you?

Or for this one using baby fabrics.

I love fabrics and I can see I am in for many hours of tooling around through the collections.  Oh me, oh my!  Where will the time come from?

Wednesday WOW - May 19

This is what I had planned to work on today:

Instead, this is what I found when I returned from a quick trip to town:

Looks like Sarge has found the source of our latest water leak.  He has a plan, so today I did some lessons in EQ6. 

More Layouts in EQ6

Something I've been working on learning to do in EQ is create - and save - useful custom layouts. 

Recently I explored the irregular layouts that come in EQ6.  There are some very interesting and useful layouts there, but of course, I am not satisfied.  I want more!

Now, creating a custom layout is not real easy, but it's not real hard either.  The hard part is creating one that can actually be used for something!  I have many examples of really BAD layouts, but I don't think I'll share those!!!!

Once I figured out some tricks - like lining up blocks with the margin - and came up with a decent layout, my next challenge was to save it so it can be used again.  Turns out that's not so hard at all!

So after some "by guess and by gosh"  I came up with this, based on a photo of Esther Aliu's Red Delicious quilt and filled with the same half-square triangles you've seen before.

This is where some of the magic in EQ comes into play.  Let's move some of these to make it look more interesting.

Not bad (if you like yellow!).  Let's try it with the four-patch.

and the mosaic:

or Square in a Square (one of my favs)

Now I might be ready to really use this in a "theme" quilt.  In March I was playing with shamrocks.  Did you know you can use the heart shape to make a shamrock?  How about this?

I like it.  Yeah, I would want to adjust the appliques so they don't stretch or flatten so much, and maybe some adjustments would help those flying geese.  But I think we are starting to see something doable here.   And I'm having lots of fun, even if these designs and fabric never meet!

Why We Read Directions

I worked on this month's Thimblerries block today.  Nice block, great instructions, and the two blocks went together really fast.  Until . . .

. . . I turned the page!  There was supposed to be a "right flower" and a "left flower."  As in, the fence posts face the other way.

Oh.

Wednesday WOW - May 12

I'm playing exploring in Electric Quilt some more today.  Oh, and I picked up the Thimbleberries block for this month.  These are starting to look like there might be a fun quilt at the end of the journey!

Caffeina

This is the Traveling Page I made for Johoanna in April.  Johoanna's theme is "The Goddess Within."

When I started thinking about a design for the Goddess Within, I was thinking of something very spiritual and indicative of our inner nature – perhaps something shared among all women. As I did my research, I came across some wonderful web sites dedicated to identifying your inner goddess and maintaining a spiritual connection to the world. These were very inspiring. One of them led me to an on-line list of gods and goddesses. On this list, I found Caffeina.

Caffeina captured my imagination like no other name on these lists. I tried to move on to something more meaningful, but Caffeina would not let me go. I realized that I was already a sometime worshipper of this goddess and once acknowledging that, I was hers irrevocably!

There is no clear agreement whether Caffeina is an ancient goddess or of more modern origins – known as a “found goddess.” I will share what I found and let you make your own decision.

According to the Goddess of Random Thoughts!, Caffeina is the . . .

patroness of coffee, tea, and other caffeinated drinks or foods. Caffeina is the Roman goddess of energy, stamina, and determination. Usually portrayed as a beautiful woman rising from a coffee cup, the goddess Caffeina gives clear thought, energy and creativity.

There is a nice legend about the origins of coffee here (scroll down), and a more "scholarly" essay here.  If you wish to revere Caffeina, follow her directions in the Charge of the Goddess Caffeina. 

I made the front of this page using simple patchwork, appliqué, and hand embroidery. I used EQ6 (my newest favorite toy!) to help plan the layout.

 

On the back, I used Shiva paint sticks and a stamp of the goddess Venus to embellish a piece of batik. I used eyelash yarn and a beaded border to finish the edges.

I'm now working on the May page.  So far, so good.   I think you'll like this one, too!  And check out what everyone else has been doing on the Story of the Traveling Page.