Have you heard of Blue Meadow Designs? Cori Derksen and Myra Harder are long time friends who started a freelance quilt design business together some years ago called Blue Meadow Designs (check out their blog while their new website is under construction). We found one of their quilts in American Patchwork and Quilting October issue called, “Ahead of the Curve”. We discovered it was designed in EQ6 and wanted to share it with you here too.

One really cool thing about Blue Meadow Designs is that they create 99% of their patterns in EQ6! We feel so honored! These women enjoy the freedom of designing both traditional and modern quilts and projects for their clients and customers. Their patterns are beautiful and usually sparkling with charm and color.

So how does EQ help them design better? Cori and Myra walked us through their process of designing in a really fun way! We got to basically hear their thoughts while they played with a design in EQ6; changing colors, blocks, and styles. It’s really neat so take a read:

“Hi EQers!

We absolutely LOVE designing in EQ! In fact, just about every quilt that we have published, printed, or proposed have all been formatted in EQ. Sometimes we start with an idea, and go to our computer to create it into a project. And then there are times, when we brows through our EQ blocks, pick one, and see what we can do with it. This is exactly how we created our latest magazine project – Ahead of the Curve, published in American Patchwork & Quilting.

So here is a glimpse of how our design process can work. We usually have a rambling conversation with ourselves as we try different things, and we keep playing with it until we are happy.

One day we randomly searched through our EQ library and picked 2 blocks. We put them into a very basic, block alternating, layout.

I like this look, it reminded me of the 60’s.

Which block would look better? The one with more piecing behind it, or the one that only had one color as the background? I think I want to try this as a 2 color quilt, so we should use the block with more piecing.

Oh, I like this new look. It’s very classic. But it needs a border to reflect this simple traditional look. And now it looks like a quilt from the 30’s.

Well, what would it look like if we did it scrappy? Lets try some bright and fun fabrics. Now the same block has a whole new personality. The traditional borders would not work with this new look, so why don’t we try basic borders of bold colors. What era are we in now? Maybe the 70’s?

I think the borders made the quilt look a little squished. And how would we quilt those two outer borders? Maybe we should try something different around the outside. What if we gave the quilt incredibly wide white borders? It would be a great place to show off the quilting.

OK, maybe the borders were a little too wide and open. Let’s try a small 1” border around the blocks. Yep, now it’s perfect. It a clean and modern looking quilt, that fits perfectly into 2009.

Now we have a project that we are excited to start. It has a traditional block, but it is done in bold modern colors, and it will also be able to showcase a great quilting pattern.

We will post it on our design board, beside dozens of other project ideas, and wait for a chance to create it.

But now, we can go back to our EQ program, and play around with some more blocks, and see where it leads.”

Some time ago EQ partnered with Cori and Myra to create Town & Country Patchwork; a stand-alone software of foundation-pieceable projects, blocks, and more designed by Cori and Myra. Check out Town & Country Patchwork if you haven’t already.