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!