DIY Block Design Book Tour

I’m excited today to be able to tell you a little bit about my quilt block design process and Alyce’s of Blossom Heart Quilts new e-book DIY Block Design {which you can order here}. I kind of laughed a bit when Alyce asked if I wanted to be an “Expert” designer for the blog hop. Most of the designing I do revolves around simple rectangles, triangles, and squares, because most of what I make are patchwork objects, rather than quilts. However, with my Quatrefiol quilt block, I feel encouraged and inspired to make a few more fun blocks in the future, and I excitedly pre-ordered Alyce’s book because a lot of the reason I shy away from quilt blocks is the math {even though I use EQ7, this is a bit of a struggle for me!}. So, let me tell you a little about Quatrefoil and how it came to be:

When I agreed to design a block for The Bee Hive, I really wanted to create something unique. So, I started by looking at fabric {obviously, hehe} and background patterns for scrapbook papers. While that was on my mind, Moda’s Quattro fabric came up on Sew Lux Fabric’s website. A quick internet search showed that there weren’t tons of other quatrefoil styled quilt blocks out there, so I excitedly got to work.

Since my block size was predetermined {12 1/2″}, I opened a 12 1/2″ square in Electric Quilt and divided it in thirds. In her book Alyce gives all the details about quilt math and how to size blocks, which is very useful. I generally use EQ7 for my design because of the easy editing of the blocks. Back when I didn’t have three small children, I used to love to draw quilts on graph paper {though most of them just stayed there!}, but these days, with much more limited time, I love the ease of using the computer for drawing.

After drawing up the block I print out the directions from EQ7. While the straight measurements are easy to figure and draw in EQ7, I always have to adjust any angle block because they are always some sort of strange number for cutting. Now, with Alyce’s handy information, I feel I could more accurately choose the correct size for half square triangles, triangles and sewing methods while using EQ7, instead of having to adjust afterwards, which is what I do now.

Then, I sewed up my sample and had a fun, new block that I created myself. One thing I really felt excited about, when I started designing patchwork or quilt blocks is the way the blocks were divided and how that could affect the size and the math used. For example, this simple, 12″ block divided in thirds is easily sized to any multiple of 3. A lovely Instagram user, thepatchsmith, is making a quilt of 6″ blocks, and she made a couple of this block half the size of the original:

I hope this little behind the scenes peek gives you some motivation to design a quilt block or two yourself. As I said at the beginning of this post, the more I do it, the more I want to and the more exciting it becomes! And, take a moment to stop by Blossom Heart Quilts, Alyce has great patterns and freebies in addition to her book, which I have thoroughly enjoyed!