Block Five

Here is Block #5 from the jelly roll quilt-along hosted by Moose on the Porch Quilts.  It is a pattern called "Chain Link."  It reminds me of a Chinese lantern.  I have never used pre-cut quilt fabric so this project has been a lot of fun, and I now understand why pre-cuts are so popular.  Quick and easy!

The quilt world is buzzing with news of Electric Quilt's upcoming release of version 7.  The world of virtual quilting is stepping up another notch.  Version 7 includes 79 new features.  For those of us who LOVE EQ6, we can hardly wait to get our hands on this product.  (Internet grapevine says preorders can be made at patchworkplanet.com if you just can't wait for it's early June release.)  Version 7 boasts improved scan capability for both photos and your own fabrics, new block tools, 120 new layouts and blocks that resize themselves when you simply drag and drop them into place on your quilt layout.  There is also the return of an earlier (and very popular) feature - the ability to design one quadrant of a block and then flipping it or rotating it to make an entire block.  Awesome!  If you quilt and have not tried this software - try it.  It is so much fun.   There is lots of built in help to get you started.  The only problem is you will have so much fun playing with the software designing original quilts, you won't be at your machine....

Circles!

This month's challenge from Electric Quilt is to design a quilt featuring circles.  I have designed several, but I like these two the best, so I think I will send them in.  I haven't participated in one of their challenges yet, so this should be fun.

More Sharons

Here are a few more of the designs I entered in the Rose of Sharon contest at Electric Quilt. They received over 800 designs, so the book being prepared with the 100 best designs should be terrific. Ultimately, EQ will make all 800 designs available to everyone using EQ.

Rose of Sharon Contest

Electric Quilt has joined forces with Nine Patch Media and Sharon Pederson to host a contest designing Rose of Sharon Blocks. Sharon is putting together a book that will feature 150 different Sharon designs. None of my are traditional so they may get tossed out, but it was certainly fun putting them together. Here are the first few.