Wednesday, May 12, 2010

New Quilt Designs with EQ6

As always, I have a quilt design in my head, but several actually found their way onto paper this week.  I have always been intrigued with the designs of ancient mosaic tiles, so I decided to use some of the motifs to design a quilt.  The small tiles are so like patches in patchwork that I couldn't help seeing the similarities.  In the illustration below, from the book Ancient Mosaics by Roger Ling (p 66) I was stunned to see the six-pointed stars made of diamonds and the hexagon between them filled with an amazing six-petaled flowers.  If it weren't for the intricate rope borders around the larger hexagons you would think you were looking at a quilt.  And to think some artist sat there placing each of those tiny tiles into some kind of cement which managed to last all of these thousands of years.  I only hope the quilt that this mosaic inspires is as time-worthy.
Look at these incredible motifs in this tilework.  It just blows me away.  I do a program on the Hexagon shape in quilting, and now I can see I am going to have to add a few more slides to my powerpoint!!  LOL

When I saw the Stonehenge line of fabrics from Northcott being advertised I knew I had found a great combination.  I downloaded all the Stonehenge fabrics from the Northcott website so I could play with the designs and the actual fabrics on EQ6.  Don't you just love EQ??  I played on EQ6 and came up with a lot of different designs.  Here is one of them:


I love how the design looks like marble and stone -- even in the computer generated drawing -- using the Stonehenge fabrics.  Of course I had to go shopping and order a huge pile of the fabrics to play with.
Here is another tile design that intrigued me.  This one was from a book called The Tile Book: Decorating with Fired Earth by Elizabeth Hilliard, page 141.  I loved the colors in this tile and the wild floral motifs in the central four-patch.  Did you ever see a tile design that looked more like a quilt???  I thought this one would be easy to adapt to a quilt design.  It took a bit more ingenuity than I first thought, especially to design the sashing and choose fabrics, but I think I am on the right track.  I need to play a bit more with fabrics, but I am liking the direction it is going in.  And here is the quilt design I have so far in EQ6:


Can't you just see this covering a huge floor in a church baptistry?


This is the sort of thing that is going to keep me jazzed for a long time.  Now I have to get away from the computer and go to my studio and sew!!  As always, thanks for visiting.

5 comments:

  1. Very cool. Glad you are feeling better.

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  2. I took a few pictures of some pretty tile last week at the Quilt show. Don't know quite what I'll do with them. I like your tile work in EQ, very nice.

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  3. Hi Reeze, the designs you made are stunning! I got EQ6 for my birthday and am learning every day, what an awesome tool. I love reading your blog. I hope you have a marvellous week, regards from the Netherlands, Anita.

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  4. This is really pretty. I'm new to your site and was wondering if there was a way to buy this pattern from you? Thanks for your time.

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  5. Reeze

    I love these quilts. Am I missing something? What are the names of these designs and do you sell patterns for them?

    I just happened on these and would like to help make one.

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I'd love to know what you think! Thanks for sharing your ideas.