Piecepatcher
Quilts
One Canadian's Website ~ Not Just Quilting
"What If" Ideas for flipping and rotating quilt blocks.
The blocks and quilts shown here are my Northern Lights Collection - named after the wandering, shifting, ever-changing patterns of lights that sometimes appear in the night skies of Canada's north.
Here are the 11 quilt ideas that won me first prize September 1998 in EQ's Contest! Contest! which ran on their EQ 3 website at that time. Barb Vlack contributed a wonderful block called Undulating Geese to EQ's Sew Precise I and II, a collection of 1000+ quilt block designs published on CD-ROM by Electric Quilt Company, whose software was used for almost all my blocks and quilts on this website. Her block inspired me to try some variations using similar construction techniques. My blocks don't have the geese points that hers do; and I also created a couple of "connector" blocks for the corners. Another inspiration was Barb's book Too Much Fun (with EQ3) which encourages users to ask the "What If..." question. For information on EQ3, EQ4, and Barb Vlack's Books for EQ, visit the Electric Quilt Website.
All of the quilts shown here were made with just these 4 blocks. There are no quilt patterns here, but I have included instructions for drawing the individual blocks, either in EQ or by hand.
- used them in groups?
- connected them in rings?
- flipped them over?
- used them in a border?
- tried different quilt layouts?
- used just the corner ones in a drunkard's path layout?
Here are the quilts I came up with !
Above Left: A centre wreath with plain and wandering borders.
Centre: Nine wreath blocks surrounded by a wandering border
Right: A small centre wreath, lots of plain areas for quilting.
Above Left: Diamond in the centre, this one uses mostly block #4
Centre: This centre reminds me of windmills or palm leaves.
Right: My favourite! The diamond-set border makes the difference
Above Left: Gentle waves using only block # 2 makes for a traditional look.
Centre: Similar but the blocks are turned and some reversed.
Turning the blocks in a different way gives a new look.
Above Left: Border is two rows of block # 3 stretched long and narrow to fit.
Centre: Another favourite, a wandering centre motif set off with plain borders.
Right: Blocks 1 and 3 in reds and greens make a Christmas Wreath.
The last one wasn't in the contest, it was added for this webage
Here is how to draw the blocks. In EQ you'll
be able to flip them, reverse them,
or turn them into rectangles, but they can also be drawn by hand on a
grid of 6 by 6 squares.
For blocks 1 and 4, the angles do not need to be exact to
achieve results.
For blocks 2 and 3, divide block into 6 rows. In block 3 the triangles
curve in their layout.
The geese (the cut-off triangle parts) are cut with 45 degree angles on their
sides.
