Tropical Beauty

Designing quilts is my favorite part of quiltmaking… I love playing with fabrics and color. When I first started designing and making quilts, all I had was graph paper, sharp pencils, and colored pencil. I always liked coloring, so I would spend hours coloring my designs. Then along came Electric Quilt… Yowser!! I could design quilts and play with fabric, not just color… I was in heaven! Being able to design quilts on a computer was a life changing experience. Do you EQ? I DO!!

One thing I really like about EQ is that you don’t have to be able to draw. Last year, I wanted needed to design a quilt and I thought an applique design would be nice. So, I started looking at basic applique blocks in EQ, when I found this block I thought it had possibilities.

Next, with the magic of EQ, I copied, pasted, and rotated the flowers to create a circular design.

Hmmm… the block needed work! I didn’t like the shape of the petals and I wanted each flower to have the same number petals. And the stems needed to be curved. Back to the drawing board… so to speak!

Better! Did you notice I made the flower centers larger? Since I was going to use two colors for the petals, I decided to added another petal to each flower, so I could alternate the different colored petals.

Okay… we’re getting close! A few more tweaks, add a few more circles… change the colors, add borders and Voila!!

EQ image…

Finished quilt top!!