AccuQuilt asked quilters to design a quilt which they would then paint as a 20′ x 20′ block on their corporate offices. The received over 400 entries! First prize was selected by AccuQuilt and 2nd and 3rd place were determined by AccuQuilt’s followers on Facebook. The Grand Prize winner won a $1000 shopping spree from AccuQuilt and a trip for two to Fremont, Nebraska to see the unveiling of the quilt.

So who one first place? Well, EQ user Linda Erickson of course! Here is Linda’s winning block and explanation.

My design efforts are usually done in my Electric Quilt software. Since I personally like blocks that seem to show motion, I started out looking at the “Windmill” block in my EQ software. I tried a variety of blocks and layouts but decided that simpler was better; the smaller pieces in complicated blocks would not have shown up well. My objective was to use shapes that could be cut with AccuQuilt’s basic dies, namely squares, triangles, half square triangles, etc. I found and modified the “Rosebud” block in EQ (which has a variety of other names in Block Base). The resulting modified block probably exists somewhere in quilt land but I had not seen it anywhere; it evolved in my EQ. My secondary objective was to utilize the colors found in AccuQuilt’s advertising (I tried other colorations but kept coming back to the colors I found in the GO cutter die listings). I tried various colorings for the block (in EQ) and finally decided on the one which turned out to be the winner in the contest (much to my delight!). I really love the way that EQ lets me literally play around until I find what looks best to my eye; it would have taken weeks rather than days if I were still drawing by hand and using colored pencils to audition colors.