Category Archives: Travel

Travel to various parts of the world

Following an Idea: Electric Quilt Comes to the Rescue

Grand Prismatic Hot Springs Aerial View:  Photo by Larry Mayer (with permission).

Aerial View Grand Prismatic Hot Springs
Aerial View Grand Prismatic Hot Springs

On our visit to Yellowstone National Park several years ago, I purchased this postcard because I loved Grand Prismatic Hot Springs.  This view shows the different colors of algae that grow at each temperature level as the water cools.

I tried several ways of translating this into a quilt.  First, I tried sketching it to create an appliqué art quilt.  Didn’t work. So, I let it go a couple of years.

I had been playing on EQ5™ or 6 (that is how long ago this was).  My favorite pastime was to rotate blocks and see what happened.  I had printed out some of the results and they were sitting in a pile in my studio.  The time came to clean up the piles.

In quick succession, I discovered the post card and I found some “doodling” from EQ™.

The design I found

This outline uses a block called Tumbling Star. I had rotated the block to create the secondary pattern containing the circles.  As I was flipping through the pages in the pile, I found it and my eyes went to the circular design.  All of a sudden, something clicked…

 

 

 

What did I see?

I saw the possibility of something if I colored the patches correctly.  I immediately went down to the computer and started playing with color

 

 

 

Tumbling Star Block

This block was complex enough to allow me to color the patches to reflect the colors I wanted by building the colors asymmetrically.

 

 

 

 

 

Grand Prismatic Block with Color

I started to add colors to the quilt, reducing it to four blocks.

 

 

 

 

Grand Prismatic Final

 

 

The final design from EQ™.  I was very happy with the design.  I immediately started shopping for fabrics.

 

 

 

Grand Prismatic Original

This is the original quilt I made using shaded fabrics to create the different colors. (Photo by Meg Weglarz.)  I ended up adding a narrow border to enclose the design.  But, that was not enough.

 

 

 

Grand Prismatic StonehengeI am very fond of Northcott’s Stonehenge fabrics.  I had all the right colors in my collection to put in a little more detail than the original.  I had also gained experience in free motion quilting. (Photo by Marcia Birken.)

This quilt now hangs in my great room, always a memory of Yellowstone.

If you want to learn more about designing quilts in EQ, please take a look at EQ7™: Master the Basics at QuiltEd Online.  In this class, I teach the basics of EQ and a little beyond.  You will be able to design quilts from your own blocks with all the information you need to get started on sewing.  It has continuous enrollment and unlimited access to the 19 lessons.  It is a great way to learn EQ7™.