Several people have asked me how I create my designs. Many of them start with a sketch or a mental image. Some are created by just playing around with my favorite design program – Electric Quilt’s EQ8. This program is great for creating the quilt design itself, but I use a variety of other programs like Word, Lucidcharts, Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Illustrator to turn the design into instructions others can use.

Recently, I joined the Goose Goose Duck Challenge for EQ8 to learn more about my favorite program. Kari Schell of On Point Quilters led the challenge. She provided excellent instructions on how to design several blocks and quilts based upon the basic Flying Geese block. During this challenge, even a frequent flyer like me learned a few new tips and tricks to make designing quicker and easier on EQ8. I really want to thank Kari for pulling together such a great project.

The Goose Goose Duck Challenge was divided into six “blocks” and quilts were created from each of those. Every few days, Kari provided a short tutorial on how to create the blocks and quilts. In order to complete the challenge, the participants picked “fabrics” of their choice from the EQ8 library and followed her instructions to create their own quilts. It is much easier and cheaper to audition colors and fabrics virtually! I selected Roseberry Cottage by Andover for my challenge.

I gained two things from this challenge. First, it opened up the possibilities in my mind for some simple blocks, like Flying Geese. Granted, one has to master points to appreciate the Flying Geese. Thankfully, there are several tutorials on line that make actual Flying Geese blocks quick and painless. Second, I learned some great shortcuts for quilt design.

Please see the slideshow below to enjoy images from the quilts I created using Kari’s challenge designs. Everyone can benefit from such a challenge. You don’t know what you don’t know until you challenge yourself!

Happy Quilting!

Laureen