New Projects and Challenges

Hello Hazel here! Are you ready for our challenge? We're asking you to make a quilt which includes pieced letters. It can be any size you choose so you have plenty of freedom in the design and it can include other blocks too. I gave some links to useful websites in a previous post here.

Today I've been playing in Electric Quilt (EQ7) software to make a banner design for YMQG - what do you think?  Electic quilt has  classic pieced alphabets and a foundation pieced lower and upper case alphabet which I used for this design. There are even Greek and Hebrew alphabets if you want something a bit different! I can't live without EQ7 because I use it to design and adapt quilt patterns for my classes and it really is brilliant! You can create your own block designs or use hundreds of pre-drawn ones on a choice of quilt layouts. There are a multitude of possibilities to choose fabrics, colours and sizes of blocks and borders too but it's very easy to use. I can also export pictures of the blocks or quilts to illustrate my instruction sheets. I don't have any affiliation to Electric Quilt but if you're interested check out the Electric Quilt Blog to see some projects designed in EQ7.

With the New Year there are many new projects and challenges out there in blogland. I came across a link to a new 'Skill Builder' Block of the Month on our new member Sarah's blog Duck Egg Threads, which looks fantastic. Sarah's also taking part in the new Craftsy 2013 Block of the Month. Both of these are free so well worth a look!

If you fancy a different challenge how about a Mug Rug swap? Michelle at Quilting Gallery is hosting one. It costs $5 to join but you get two lovely free mug rug patterns included. Visit Quilting Gallery regularly to find a weekly coupon for fabric and pattern discounts and enter the weekly show and tell to be in with a chance to win a prize. 

Have you set yourself new challenges this month? Leave a comment below to share your favourite new projects, swaps and blog hops!