My sister's trip to Arizona yielded this wonderful Christmas gift of assorted fat quarters from the Southwest. These fabrics were not in my normal color range, but they were inspirational. I challenged myself to use them all in one quilt. I met that challenge and had virtually no scrap! Extra geese were used on the back. The only fabric I added was the black background. Eleanor Burns's sampler inspired the layout for sample blocks of various sizes. I used blocks from her book, from EQ, from "Angle Play Blocks" by Margaret Miller, and some of my own.

I did this just before EQ6 arrived. This pattern designed by me is one of my most popular. I took a Wool Applique class and this is what I came out with.  I love working with wool, (No needle turn!)  Pattern is called:  My English Garden, #114

Quilted Escapes
website: www.quiltedescapes.net
blog: www.quiltedescapes.blogspot.com/

Here's one my first quilts that I designed in EQ5. I was a newbie with EQ5 in August 2002, so it was a real challenge to make the motifs and put them in the right places in the blocks. It took me a couple years to make this quilt, always thinking how I was going to do the next steps. It wanted to name itself King Arthur's Court, but I changed it to Cleopatra's Courtyard, and that name was soon shortened to just "Cleo's Court". At the time I was (and still am) fascinated with everything Titanic. A trip to the Titanic Exhibit in Cleveland and I had a picture of the actual tile that was brought up from the wreckage, which I traced in EQ5 and I designed my quilt around that. The gold fabric is Michel Miller's Fairy Frost, and it sparkles just as I imagine Cleopatra's gold jewelry did! I have always wanted to put fringe on a quilt, and this one was perfect for it.

I had designed this quilt as a sampler of my 5th year of quilting... a couple of years later the top was done, then another year, and I decided to tie it as a finish, instead of quilting. The top did have the pinwheel side borders, but while tying it, I ended up removing those borders as I saw too many mismatched centres on the pinwheels which made the quilt a bit too narrow for its length. I entered it into the local fair in the tied quilt category. It won 1st place.

blog: pennyquiltsjournal.blogspot.com

My son asked me to make a quilt for his girlfriend who loved penquins. We found a pattern that he liked in the January '97 issue of Quiltmaker made by Nancy Brown called "Penquin Party". I redesigned the block and setting in EQ5. My version was featured in a Quiltmaker's Spring '06 All Time Favorites. I made the EQ quilt but added another blue border on three sides before I called it done.

I am not a skilled user of EQ - thus the wonky corners in project quilt - and I mainly use EQ for color placement and proportion decisions. This is a traditional double wedding ring quilt. I used the plastic templates by Shar Jorgenson, Quilting from the Heartland. This is my daughter's wedding quilt, which she wanted in neutral colors. This was about as neutral as I was able to go. I had bought a fat quarter collection of Japanese fabrics the year before and thought they would be perfect. Six months after the wedding, they bought a beautiful house in which the master bedroom was painted a deep gray. So . . . I think my quilt was meant to be there!

I have made many of the quilts that I have designed in EQ. In fact I rarely make a quilt that is not created in EQ6.  If I begin with a pattern I always create all the blocks in EQ before I even purchase the fabric. I like to put the puzzle together in my mind before I even read the instructions to see if my way is any easier than the pattern instructions.

I created a few quilts after we went to Alaska in 2003 for my family but this is the one I made for myself.  The quilt was created in EQ5 but I have saved it in EQ6 as well.  I appliqued photos that were printed on EQ Printables. 

This was a vice/versey project, where I had the quilt done first and then drew it up in EQ5 to make a pattern. The fabrics in the quilt were from the Three Rivers Quilt Guild 2004 challenge, the challenge being "when life hands you lemons..." the feature fabric being... lemons! I used the whole lemons as the fish bodies and the slices for their tails and fins. A dear friend came up with the name - being an avid ichthyologist he knew of the fish named Tang... and my fishies were christened Lemon Tang!

This quilt was designed for a very dear friend who is quite a Tweety fan. The center is a pre-printed panel approximately 14.5 x 15.25. After collecting numerous coordinating fabrics, I began the design process. The blocks I chose echo the design elements in the center panel and the blue borders were done with a curved stripe fabric that helps to soften the quilt and also give the illusion of movement. The custom quilting was done by Susan Eitnier and she did an excellent job of making the quilt come alive. The finished quilt is bright and fun and brings a smile to your face.

Made in 2006, this was my EQ challenge submission for Dec. 2003, designing a round quilt (Quilt #111). I wanted to do another quilt with fringe, so I chose to do this design, though in bright colors and with long fringe instead of tassells. I was lucky to find a skein of varigated yarn that had the same colors that used in the quilt, and combined that with another skein of solid black to make the fringe.