When it’s your turn as queen bee in a quilting bee, choosing what quilt block design and what colours to use can be a difficult decision to make! It can be a slow process doing it by hand, especially if you want to test out other colour options. Last year, I chose the Treasure Hunt quilt block for my month as queen, and thought I’d choose my favourite colours – navy, mustard, teal and coral (you can see how some of the blocks look like together here). But where did I want to place each colour?! So I opened up EQ8 and had a play. Psst – stay tuned until the end for a coupon code for EQ8!
This is what I first tried, but I decided that I wanted to make the coral be more of a “pop” than a feature colour, and to make the overall quilt a bit more “moody” by using more navy and teal. So I moved the coral to the corner sections instead, and ended up with something like this.
Hmm, almost, but I didn’t quite want the bands of colour like that. A bit too regimented. A quick rotation of some blocks and I get this look instead…
Oh yes! That’s more like it! I never did get time to piece my quilt top together, so I’ll be adding to it again in this year’s round and making it nice and big, but here’s a quick snapshot of what it looks like in real life.
By the way, the biggest tips I can give for selecting fabric for your quilt blocks when you’re queen?
- Provide a picture of the kinds of fabrics/colours you are wanting, using 4-6 examples, so that people can more accurately match the shades of the colours you’re wanting.
- The scrappier the fabrics, the more cohesive it will look overall. When you have 12 people each sewing the same designs, fabrics will vary in shades and tones, plus the quilt blocks will all end up a little different in size/seams, so the scrappy fabrics help blend it all together.
This year, I’m also creating mock ups in EQ8 for each month of my quilting bee, demonstrating how their chosen quilt blocks will look in the finished quilt top. Our January queen be chose the Double Star quilt block in navy, emerald, and light grey, using the same fabrics throughout. Pardon the late night pictures, but here’s my blocks…
And this is what her finished quilt will look like. So good!
February’s queen, Josephine, chose the popular Tic Tac Toe quilt block in pink and grey to make a quilt for her daughter. She asked for a variety of any shade of pink in the corners, but with the same light grey, and dark grey, prints for the rest of the blocks.
Her finished quilt will look a bit like this! Such a sweet quilt, with a hint of edge through the dark grey…
If you want to grab EQ8 for yourself, then I’ve got some fantastic news for you! From now until April 17, you can get 20% off everything in store with the code – EQ8ALYCE. How awesome is that?!
That’s an amazing deal, and includes both the Electric Quilt software, and all the various products and downloads they have too.
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