EQ Blog

This is an official WELCOME TO EQ for Kelly Jackson! Kelly, like others, wasn’t sure she could learn EQ6. She let it sit in the box for some time before a friends, SewCalGal, helped her muster up the courage to dive in! With the help of EQ6 Simplified, Kelly spent just 15 minutes each day working through a step-by-step lesson. In no time Kelly was nearly a pro.

Kelly documented her “journey through EQ6 SImplified” on her blog, I Have a Notion. It’s a fantastic ode to how great of a tool EQ6 Simplified can be for helping weary EQ6ers get started. If you are considering EQ6 Simplified but still aren’t sure if it’s the right book for you make sure that you read Kelly’s blog. She does a great job of illustrating how the book is supposed to work.Kelly says, ” I’m hooked. I know I will continue with my lessons because I want to be able to build on my skills.”

Try out our other EQ6 companion books when you are ready for more!

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Kelly and keep up the great work! Make sure you show us your creations sometime.

Sue Spargo recently started a Kit of the Month using her Sue Spargo: Folk-Art Dreams CD. Each kit will contain a projects that uses elements printed from the Folk-Art Dreams CD! Each kit is available on Sue’s website and will range from $25-$35 a month.

This Hana ‘Flower’ Purse (Size 14” x 12”) is available on Sue’s website now. The appliqué flower pattern was printed from Sue Spargo: Folk-Art Dreams CD.

Darlene Simmons is SewCalGal of SewCalGal’s Blog. She is hosting a really neat show/give-a-way that we think you all should enter! It’s called the Virtual Christmas Quilt Show. You enter images of your Christmas quilts (finished or unfinished) to be included in the slide show of Christmas quilts on Darlene’s blog. She even encourages you to include little blurbs about your Holiday traditions and celebrations! It’s a really fun way to share your Holiday cheer and maybe get some inspiration for next years Holiday projects. I always think it’s fun to read about how other families celebrate this time of year as well.

There are no judges in this give-a-way either. The “winners” are randomly selected to receive door prizes donated by quilting and sewing companies. Check out Darlene’s blog to see the list of prizes!

Visit SewCalGal’s blog to submit your quilts to the Virtual Christmas Quilt Show .

Quilt University has sign-ups now (enrollment opens November 27) for January online EQ classes taught by Fran Gonzalez and Patti Anderson. Fran’s classes must be taken in order. Her “beginner” class is “EQ6 Sampler” which starts January 8, 2010. Patti’s teaching EQ6 Appliqué Design, starting January 22, 2010. These classes fill fast, so sign up now.

http://www.quiltuniversity.com

Need some helpful tips on scanning and preparing your fabrics to be used in your EQ6 designs? Follow this great tutorial from Three Ducks on a Roof. They have done a great job of making it easier for you.

Amy Butler has just released her new line of fabrics called Love and she’s generously offering Amy Butler Software users the virtual files! The fabrics also come with a bonus quilt. The bonus quilt and fabrics will be automatically added to your Amy Butler Softwares program when you download the file. Download the update now!

Don’t have Amy Butler Softwares yet? Order it now!

See Electric Quilt 6 in action! We just added two more videos to the Electric Quilt Channel.

Visit http://www.youtube.com/ElectricQuilt/ to see them all.

Upgrading to Windows® 7? EQ6 is completely compatible so no worries! You may receive an Error 42 after installation. If this occurs, follow these steps from the EQ website to complete your activation. If you experience any other problems simply call The Electric Quilt Tech Support at 419-352-1134 for assistance.

You can make your own holiday cards using EQ6! Download this free EQ6 quilt project to be your card template. Swap out the block using the Set Block tool for one from the library or one that you draw yourself.

Print on heavyweight paper and simply fold the 8-1/2″ x 11″ paper into quarters. You can buy envelopes in large quantities from your local office supply store. The ones that are about 4-3/8″ x 5-3/4″ will fit the folded cards with a little wiggle room.

Like the card idea? How about gift tags too?!

Print as Many as fit can help you there. Just select the block, and print “showing fabrics.”

If you make your block size small (like 2 inches) and put a check next to “print as many as fit” on the Options tab, you’ll get a whole page of gift cards you can cut out.

You can choose whether or not you want the black outlines on or off with the checkboxes on the Options tab for “print block outline” and “print patch outline.” Step by step instructions are on the notecards of the two different quilts in the project.

For the gift cards, print them on heavyweight paper (not just computer paper). Then spray adhesive on them (outdoors, so you don’t breathe it) and sprinkle on glitter. Cut them out, hole-punch the corners, and thread a ribbon through. The plain back side can hold “To: From:” messages.

Have fun!

So this whole time we’ve been working with octagons…. want to go to the next step?

How about hexagons, pentagons, and other polygon kaleidoscopes?

Try Andrea’s lesson and see what you come up with:
October - Endless Possibilities

Don’t forget to keep those Kaleidoscope Mystery pictures coming!

We’ve posted another one of Andrea’s segments on Quilting Arts. Here she’s using Angie Padilla’s My Dream House add-on to create pillows, quilts, and wallhangings with fun scenes and furniture on them.

Visit our channel on YouTube and check out episode # 109:

http://www.youtube.com/ElectricQuilt

Here’s the lesson for month 11: Drawing a Twist inside a Kaleidoscope Wedge.

If you have any suggestions for what you’d like to learn in month 12, leave a comment here.

To see the complete list of lessons so far, visit the Kaleidoscope Collectors page.

I was revisiting some EQ-related blogs I had bookmarked and found this post by Jan T. I thought, “wow… EQ tutorials… I need to check that out!”

So I did… and there are quite a few on Jan’s website:
http://jantsutopia.com.au/freetutorials/EQ/tutorials_EQ.html

Jan writes a column called “Computer Quilts” in Down Under Quilts magazine.

Kudos to you Jan! I’m so impressed.

-Andrea : )

Yes, beginners, YOU CAN design this in EQ.

Get the pattern:
http://ajpadilla.com/patterns/themes/just-kids/rock-bye-baby/blocks-box

Angie’s quilt is an easy-to-sew, easy-to-mock-up-in-EQ project perfect for beginners. Her PDF pattern gives you all the measurements.

To design this quilt in EQ, try the following:
1. Click QUILT > New Quilt > Horizontal.
2. Go to the Layout tab, make the block (5″) and sash size (3″) match Angie’s sizes in the PDF.
3. On the Borders tab, change the border to be Long Vertical and 3.00″.
4. Then you can either draw the blocks yourself using EasyDraw* or use something similar like the “3 Log Cabin” block from LIBRARIES > Block Library > 3 Foundation Pieced > Log Cabins. Use the Set Block tool to set blocks in your quilt.
5. Then have fun coloring with the Paintbrush tool.

If you want to draw the blocks yourself, try this:
4a) Click WORKTABLE > Work on Block.
4b) Click BLOCK > New Block > EasyDraw Block.
4c) Click VIEW and make sure Precision Bar has a check next to it.
4d) To draw the sash block (3″)… in the Precision Bar, make the block size and graph paper be 3. Make the snaps be 6.
4e) Use the Line tool to draw lines to make this block and then click Add to Sketchbook.

4f) To draw the main block (5″)… Click BLOCK > New Block > EasyDraw Block.
4g) Make every number in the Precision Bar be 5.
4h) Use the Line tool to draw lines to make this block and then click Add to Sketchbook.

4i) Switch back over to the quilt (WORKTABLE > Work on Quilt).

So I visited the vendor mall for a while. I got to this booth that was an absolute color explosion. I think it was the Material Girl shop I loved it. Everything was Westminster, FreeSpirit, and Art Gallery fabrics. I was staring at this quilt they had on their wall thinking “oh my, that’s a lot of piecing and appliqué.” And then I got closer and realized… “no…. that’s just plain squares! I can totally do that!” I asked them about the fabric, and of course they had half-yard cuts that they showed me off the rack.

For those of you who want to try something similar, these Westminster fabrics would work for the plain squares:

Start a horizontal quilt. Set these in the plain squares alternately (ALT). Then set something super-simple in the other alternate blocks (ALT)… like a Log Cabin (with really thick logs), or a 4-X block, or a Diamond in the Square block. Sew it up. Then when it comes time to quilt it, echo-quilt the Westminster fabric on the lines of the fabric design. It ends up looking like you appliquéd it all! It’s so easy it seems like cheating, but hey, that fabric was really inspirational.

So after buying about 6 or 7 different ones…. whoops… what happened to my fiscal self control?… lol… I went off to teach my EQ6 Layouts class.

There were many familiar faces in my class. I was excited that they would all be familiar with my teaching style… and that if they could follow me that well in the previous classes, then today would be great as well.

Our first quilt was a medallion quilt. I taught them about borders: adding borders, inserting borders, deleting borders, etc. I showed them how the “aligned” border styles work great when you want seams to line up. I also showed them how Tile Squares and Tile On-Point does the math for you. We added an Auto Border around the outside and called it done. They were very happy with their quilt #1’s.

For the next layout, we played with Vertical Strip Quilts… an often under-appreciated quilt layout in EQ6. I showed them how it works just like borders. We designed some strips, cloned them in different orders to make the rest of the strips, and then started designing. I had them put a wide border around the quilt and we set the Auto Border Vine with the birds in the border. It’s a cool trick that “whatever Auto Border you try out, the blocks go in your Sketchbook no matter what.” So we used the Erase tool to wipe out the border, but then used the Set Block tool to use the Auto Border blocks in two of our strips. We put stars down the center and then gave them more breathing room by using Serendipity > Frame Blocks to frame up the stars and then we set them again in the quilt. I noticed the class was flying through my lesson plan once again, so I padded the lesson a little bit and taught them how to steal the birdie out of the block and make him into his own Motif and set that on Layer 2 … like a Folk Art quilt.

Quilt #3 was our first attempt at Custom Set. I showed them how long it took to set blocks, set them the right size, use the Graph Pad, and align them like a puzzle.

Thanks to the Nebraska State Quilt Guild for a wonderful weekend. I had a blast visiting your state, meeting your members, shopping & teaching.