Monday, August 4, 2014

Quilt Design of the day 1-15


I find it interesting to see all my designs so far all together. I see some trends, and I can tell I didn't know the software as well early on.  Some of my earlier ones are my favorites, though. I have several big projects I'm finishing, but after those... not sure which of these, if any, will be next. It is fun to design more quilts than I'll ever have time to make though!

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Summer 2014 and QDAD

Summer 2014 update:

- Finished the top of my string quilt

- Working on some improv piecing blocks for part of the back of that quilt (rest will be a medium gray)

- Joined the QDAD facebook group (quilt design a day) - I learned about this from posts of interviews on Sew Mama Sew and thought it sounded like a cool idea.  I have actually been pretty terrible about designing my quilts before I start and actually have tended to pick designs/patterns that didn't require any planning or designing (see string quilt!) besides picking colors.  But more and more the past few years I have fallen in love with improv-like quiltes or asymmetrical quilts and quilts with lots of negative space... things that really need a bit more planning to look good, or at least to not waste a bunch of fabric!

When I joined QDAD there were ~275 people in the group and I figured there would be lots of designs posted every day and I would be intimidated.  Well, turns out there weren't really many people posting, though they were posted some pretty nice designs and I was a little bit intimidated. Especially because the posts are 'public' on facebook, so other people not in the group could see them, too. But I finally decided I just didn't care and designed something and posted it!

"First"

Turns out people were super-nice, gave great feedback and constructive criticism, and were helpful with some of the computer program issues I was having. And I have stuck with it for a week now, one design per day! (I'm not expecting to keep this up after fall semester starts... but who knows? They are only supposed to take ~15 minutes!) They are inspired and use the color palette from one of the Design Seeds pictures for that day.  Sometimes I have really not liked my design, other times I think they're ok, and one or two I've really liked.

I'm beginning to love designing ... now, to find a bit more time to actually make some of these!

Maybe a future post will be all my designs up until that point.