EQ7 Accuquilt Design Challenge

Hi everyone:


Well it's Wednesday and my turn to tell you a little bit about the project I designed for the EQ7 Accuquilt Design Challenge back in September 2010. This is the first opportunity to see what other designers submitted and I'm especially excited to see the winning design by Judy Danz, which will be revealed very soon. 


If you've been following my blog posts, you will remember that I had previously described my process in designing my entry, which was hasty, to say the least. To recap, I knew about the contest, but did not have an Accuquilt GO! cutter at the time it was announced, so didn't really think much about entering it. Then, when I acquired my Accuquilt GO! and received a reminder about the contest, I frantically whipped up one small design and, with SewCalGal's help, was able to submit it in the contest just under the wire. I didn't win - not that I expected to - but I learned several things about designing on EQ7 with Accuquilt dies and that made the process worthwhile. I also made a new friend!

Holiday Medley die

Accquilt dies I originally purchased 

I haven't yet revealed my design, so you're the first readers to see it. When I purchased the Accuquilt GO! cutter I also purchased a few extra dies. I never do anything small when I have the opportunity to go big! I especially liked the Holiday Medley die, so I decided to use this in my design.


While I didn't actually have to make the design up in fabric (an EQ7 file would've sufficed), I decided I wanted to see what it would look like in fabric and actually made the quilt top. So, since the clock was ticking down towards the contest deadline, I decided to make a small table topper or wall hanging, rather than a large quilt.


I like to combine a simple pieced background with a few appliqués, so I used the 4 1/2" square from the Value die (included with the Accuquilt GO! cutter) to cut 15 squares in various shades of light blue for the background. I stitched these together into 3 rows of 5 squares each. Pretty simple, right? 


Next, I needed to decide which die shapes I wanted to use from the Holiday Medley die and how I would arrange them. I decided to use all of the shapes, with the exception of the tree. I used green, white, blue and red for my appliqué shapes - fairly traditional holiday colours. I ironed some Wonder-Under onto the back of my chosen fabrics, cut them out using the Holiday Medley die, arranged them on the pieced background and fused them down. Almost done, just needed to figure out the borders.


I didn't have time to do anything too complicated with the borders, but wanted to do something a little different. I decided to use two colours and have the border offset: one fabric along the left side and top with the other fabric along the right side and the bottom. Although I could've used my 2 1/2" strip die to cut the borders, due to the small amount of fabric, I chose to rotary cut them. The borders were stitched on and the top was done. I just needed to photograph and submit my design.


Now you're probably wondering what the final result was. Here is Holiday Jewels.

I think it turned out quilt well, I mean quite well! It isn't really this crooked looking - I did some cropping of the photo. Of course these aren't Accuquilt colours, so I also did up a virtual quilt using the company's chosen colours. While not very wintery, it has a certain something, I suppose :)

I had fun doing this challenge and hope to enter more of these, time permitting. 

Don't forget to continue following the rest of the bloggers to see the winning entry and a special giveaway on Friday from SewCalGal.

Check back with me later this week for some tips and ideas that I learned while designing this project.

Happy quilting!