Welcome to another QDAD day here at Stacey in Stitches!

If you are here visiting from the Sew Mama Sew interview, welcome! I have a lot of fun making a Quilt Design a Day. Today marks day 140 of designing for me. I am happy to say I haven’t missed a day. QDAD is one of my favorite exercises, and the group is so happy and friendly and a whole lot of fun! We’ve had an influx of new members, many of whom are participating. It’s great to see everyone’s interpretation of the inspiration photo. I hope everyone gets a change to try it at least twice. The first time for practice, the second time to get hooked!

I use EQ7 for my designs, though I did download a new program to try. I am playing with Corel Draw, and I want to try Adobe Illustrator. Sometimes there are things in my head that need a drawing board rather than a grid to work on. I have discovered many new features in EQ7 in the meantime, and I am having a blast playing with different layouts and blocks.

This design reminded me of a video game, so I called it The Dark Castle. The inspiration photo had an outdoor faucet topped with a fanciful castle. Soe days a literal interpretation is in order, and I love how it came out!

This particular inspiration was a bowl full of buttons. It evoked so many different memories in people, for me it was the button jars at my grandma’s house when they lived down the road from us. We used to play with those hundreds of buttons, and I’m sure many of them saw the inside of a vacuum when we went home. Not on purpose either.

July 4th marked our 200th member, and the 200 member challenge. l chose the color rich ice cream inspiration photo for my 200 quilt. I haven’t counted them, but I am pretty sure there is enough ice cream in this photo for all our members, including the new ones! I love the navy as a background, I think its my new favorite! I recently bought a whole lot of navy solids, so I am going to have to make something with it soon.

Anne’s 200 member quilt  ended in hilarity and this picture as a result.

You know how hard it is to take a selfie wearing a tinfoil helmet and holding a rotary cutter?? Its not easy…..and that tinfoil is HOT!

The photo for this one was of an antique door knob and keyhole. I was planning to make something around the shape of the keyhole, but then I noticed the scuffed and faded pattern carved into teh doorframebehind it. It was a little nine patch interspersed with lines and diamonds. I did my best to recreate it and ended up in a Gatsby-era art deco world. I added the tiny coral diamonds and it really added dimension to the design. I am very happy with it and may work it into a pattern.

This design started out happy and fun, but there is a running joke about the zombie apocalypse in QDAD, sparked by a series of abandoned looking building with random diamond shapes in them, and chihuahuas. Someone mentioned this looked like people running from something, probably zombies. So I turned some of my happy little petal pluses into zombies. Minus the whole Z.A theme, I like the grayscale graduating into color. It definitely sparked a conversation or two!

This inspirtion was a bowl of raspberry swirl frozen yogurt. It looked so yummy! I decided to do a cross section of the swirl, which has sparked a series of cross sectional designs. Mostly fruits and veggies, and every so often ice cream. I am going to do a couple up as patterns so I will save them for a surprise!

I did do up a foundation pattern for my feather blocks, you can download it here for free! If you make one ( or a dozen) send me a picture, I would love to see it!

Feather Block Feather String

I hope you enjoyed your visit today! Make sure to visit Amy Gunson at Badskirt, and Anne Sullivan at Play-Crafts, both have QDAD giveaways running!

Now for my Giveaway! The giveaway is now closed! You can see the winner in my next post!

The giveaway is open to anyone, including international visitors! Simply leave a comment. That’s all! Tell me your favorite color, your favorite quilt design, what you’re going to make with the feather block or the bundle, what the weather is like at your house today, tell me a joke ( the punnier the better!) ANYTHING!

I am giving away a Fat quarter bundle of 5 cool colors of my new Colorworks Premium Solids by Northcott. I picked these up on vacation, and I got a ton of yardage, so I thought I would share with everyone. The colors are deep and rich, more so than in the photo. The colors are perfect for making a QDAD of your own! The Giveaway will be open until Wednesday at 8pm PST, and I will pick the winner using Random.org

Happy Stitching!!