EQ6 – Serendipity Merge, Part 1

The leap from EQ5 to EQ6 came with a whole parcel of fun new features.  Serendipity is one of my favorites.  Serendipity allows you to take existing blocks and modify them to make new blocks by either framing them, tilting them, or merging them. 

Serendipity Frame allows me to take an existing block and put a frame around it, thereby creating a new block.  For a simple example, here’s a Star block with a Shadowbox frame:

Those folks at EQ are pretty serious.  There are lots of different frames in many different proportions to choose from.

Then there’s Serendipity Tilt.  You can take any block and tilt it to whatever degree you want.  You can even take a block you’ve tilted once and then tilt it again (and again . . .), as I’ve done with this Shoo-fly block. 

Here it is done up in a quilt.  Wouldn’t that make a cute kid’s quilt?

All very cool, but the Serendipity feature that really just made me melt is the Merge feature.  This allows me to take one block and set it into a four-sided space inside another block, thus creating a whole new block.  How cool is that?   There are plenty of existing blocks in the library that I can use because, as we know, lots and lots of quilt blocks include four-sided figures. 

But I also like to look for existing blocks that I can perform some minor modifications on.  For example, here I started with a Corn and Beans block:

I deleted the the lines that crossed in the center of the block, did a little bit of re-coloring, and then I had this:

Oh, lots of  blocks I can merge into that space!  Here’s how it looks with a simple star merged in.  So easy, and I may be prejudiced, but I think this is a lovely block.

Just for fun, here’s a couple more.  This time I started with the Wheel of Fortune block:

Once again, I removed some lines from the center section (the four diagonal lines in the corners) and re-colored.

And look how nicely an 8-pointed star fits in that center square.

Once you have your merged block, you can also modify it.  (This involved some cut and paste.  If anyone is specifically interested, I can explain in more detail how I did it).  So, here is the new block with four lines deleted.

And, here it is with four lines added to that. 

 

I like all three of these a lot though the last variation may be my favorite.  I named it Florence in honor of my mother.  One of my next steps will have to be playing with quilt designs. (Later).

Here’s just one more.  Like many quilters, I’ve been attracted to all those big blocks painted on barns.  So, I began with a basic house block and did some modifications to get the frame I wanted.  So this:

Became this:

Which became this:

Here they are placed into a quilt.  On second thought I might go back and remove those chimneys.  Might also make a few more blocks and use a 3 by 4 grid instead of 3 by 3.  What do you think?

I’ve just scratched the surface of what this feature can do.  This blog entry is only part one, to get you thinking about possibilities.  I’ve got more design ideas and another EQ6 project to download coming up!