Sorry this post is a little later than usual! California (and Oregon and Washington) were all hit by a pretty bad storm yesterday, and I spent a lot of my day dealing with the ramifications.
The water on our street was up to my knees, and even though our yard is three steps up from the street, water had completely covered our front and back yard. It was insane how quickly it happened, too. Fortunately, the really hard stuff didn’t last long enough for it to get into our house or garage, and once the rain went from “am I in a car wash???” to just normal raining, the drains caught up and we lost our lake front property.
Crazy stuff. But it’s Friday, and Friday is QDAD day, so here’s some QDADs!
10-17: Amish on the Playground
I think this was around the time I was working a lot on the Amish: A Modern Muse show at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. So I kind of had Amish designs on the brain. The photo was of a playground, and I ended up with this.
10-18: Lantern Strings
The inspiration for this design was an image of Chinese lanterns on a string. I like the subtle glow effect this one has.
10-19: Pixel Campfire
This is definitely my favorite of the week. The image was of a campfire, and it immediately brought back memories of watching embers float into the dark sky which is my favorite part of campfires. I am most proud of capturing the feeling of the twisting motion fires often create from the heat.
10-20: Easter Plaid
Oh man, I snuck in another plaid! The image was of Easter eggs, and this is the design I ended up using for Plaid Parfait, my Michael Miller challenge quilt. (Which didn’t get into the QuiltCon show, btw. Bummer!)
10-21: Does a Bear Make Log Cabins in the Woods?
The inspiration image for this was a toilet in the snow. Keepin’ it crazy over in the QDAD group! I chose log cabins to capture the swirly water.
10-22: Maple Leaves
The inspiration image was some trees with their fall colors. I spent a long time getting these leaves placed just so. Then I stood back and looked at the design and thought “wow, those look like a flock of chickens you buy from the grocery store.”
10-23: Construction Set
I felt the need to redeem myself from the previous day, so here is another take on the maple leaf block, used in a more orderly fashion. Quite a bit more successful.
And that’s another week. I hope you all have a creative weekend!
wah???? You buy flocks of chickens from grocery stores? California really is weird!
Smart ass! lol Everyone knows you buy flocks of chickens from feed stores. I was trying to not be gross and say “y’know those plucked, headless whole chickens” but now you’ve gone and made me say it. 😉
I’m completely loving the Pixel Campfire… and that was before I read your comment below it, I just stopped and took it in.
Thanks so much! That one is very high on my “must make” list, although getting the colors right will be tougher with fabric than with a screen which already glows. 🙂
I don’t recommend eating green chicken. Might make you green too.
Green eggs are okay, but not green chickens. Got it! 😉
We have had hard rain here too, but nothing as crazy as what was in your front yard, wow!
We get flooding in our area a lot, but nothing like that usually! And it came on really quickly, too which was the scariest part. It’s rained pretty hard a few times since, but there hasn’t been any flooding, fortunately! I’m glad you’re not dealing with flooding from your heavy rain!
Love the pixel campfire, and of course the Easter plaid.
That log cabin design might be a little too evocative of your inspiration for my taste. 🙂
Oh, I like the lantern strings a lot too.
Thank you! I could probably put those together as a paper-piecing pattern. Hrmmm Will have to ponder. 🙂
Hahahahaha that log cabin kinda cracks me up. Mostly because the inspiration image cracked me up.
The pixel campfire is going on my make list for sure!
what??? Your plaid quilt didn’t get in? I’m *really* interested to see what made it into the challenge category!
Nope! I did get one quilt in at least. 🙂 Alien flora didn’t make it either. Guess battery-operated mini-quilts will have to find a new show. LOL
I too am really interested to see what made it into the challenge category! I’m guessing mine didn’t feature the chosen colors well enough, which is totally fair. 🙂
I really like the lantern strings…probably because they look a bit like ornaments and I’m in a Christmas mood. 🙂
I am SOOOooo in Christmas mood! 😀 I spend every night just staring at the lights on the Christmas tree. We even got out the cheesy Christmas music. Love it all so much! 😀
You have probably already covered this somewhere, but I can’t seem to find the information. I know you offer the Palette Builder to create color palettes (awesome, btw) but what software are you using to actually design the patterns? Am I missing something when I use the builder tool? Thank you.
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner! It got falsely caught by my spam filter and I just now saw it.
For designing patterns I mainly use Adobe Illustrator. The Quilt Design A Day group has people using EQ7, Quilt Canvas (by Threadbias), Inkscape (free tool that is similar to Illustrator) pen & paper, and a few others. None of them are particularly easy to pick up (except pen & paper!), but the QDAD group on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/1382986385304572/ ) has some tutorials we’ve written and challenges to get people started. I hope that helps!