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This is just too cute… Ann Smith is the very proud grandmother of 5 year old Addie Smith. Ann has passed on her passion for quilting to Addie and the two often spend a good portion of their day quilting and designing with EQ6. EQ6 has even become a bit of a learning tool for Addie’s home-schooled art lessons. Her grandmother teaches her the basics of color matching and contrasting of which Addie is now quite the pro! In fact, designing quilts in EQ6 is one of Addie’s favorite things to do. “She is 5 and she absolutely loves EQ6. We home school and if she is dawdling around I tell her that we won’t be able to do EQ6… she picks up the pace instantly.” We just thought this was a great story and we’re happy to hear we’ve got quilters of all ages. Thanks for sharing Ann and

Here’s a fun way to draw a perfect half-circle as a PatchDraw Motif. WORKTABLE > Work on Block. BLOCK > New Block > PatchDraw Motif. (If your worktable isn’t square, go to BLOCK > Drawing Board Setup and change the Block size to be 5×5 and snaps to be 5×5.) Right-click the Appliqué toolbar and left-click Add/Remove buttons. Make sure the Ellipse tool has a check next to it. Click away from the list to close it. Click on the Ellipse tool on the toolbar. Make sure your Precision Bar is turned on (VIEW > Precision Bar needs to have a check next to it). Drag out a circle in the middle of the workspace… doesn’t matter what size. In the Precision Bar, for the first set of numbers click the left-facing arrow until both read 0.000. For the second set of numbers set them to be the size of

How cool is this? Apparently Tricia Sherman from QnnTV.com also does video spots on her own website about “The Great Canadian Shop Hop.” It’s a virtual shop hop from store to store. Jean Boyd uses our EQ Printables in her samples, classes and demos. Check out the little presentation Jean did with the EQ fabric sheets when the Great Canadian Shop Hop came to visit her local store, The Country Quilter. 1) Go to The Great Canadian Shop Hop website. 2) In the right section, click on the words “Video Player”. 3) Scroll down in the list until you find “Show #7 (The Country Quilter)”. 4) Click on the picture of the video camera where it says “Play”. What a neat idea! If you’d like to see more of how Jean uses printed photos on fabric, visit her website: Patterns by Jean Boyd

Here’s a little something for the 3-day weekend. I was talking with our part-time EQ employee/part-time quilt shop owner, Margaret, about her recent Block of the Month. She said she did it all in 5-Grid blocks. I asked her how she came up with so many cool designs and she said something so obvious I felt silly for not thinking of it sooner. A 5-Grid block is just four 4-Patches with a sash. Likewise, a 7-Grid block is just four 9-Patches with a sash. So, here’s the EQ6 trick… There are a few ways the background block can be drawn: Let’s say you want to merge the Hour Glass block with your background 5-Grid with the center sash. Just use BLOCK > Serendipity > Merge Blocks to add the new block to the Sketchbook. Edit the new block from the Sketchbook and copy and paste the corner around to the

Our Quilt Market attendees, Penny, Dean, Ann & Andrea, are all back from Portland, Oregon. Thanks to all the quilt shop owners & employees who stopped by our booth with questions or just to say “Hi” and those who attended Penny & Andrea’s schoolhouse presentations. We hope to see you all in Houston too!

I just got the coolest email from Ann Waldron about EQ & quilting and “odd uses” for EQ. I’ll let her tell you about it: I just wanted to share with you what my Dad makes using EQ. He does quite a bit of designing using the program and transforms the patterns into these wooden bowls. As you can see from the last picture, my Mom is a quilter too! My Dad (Don Uteck) has been working with wood for as long as I can remember. He has been making these segmented bowls for just the last 5 or 6 years. I am actually the EQ user in the family and got him started on it. With my Mom being a quilter as well, it was natural for him to use quilt blocks in his bowls, although he uses other designs as well. This is mainly a hobby for him,

Partners Mary Keasler and Kathy Skomp shared with us their EQ6 creations in their new published book of EQ6 quilt patterns so we thought we’d spread the news on to you. Mary and Kathy have just completed a book of four EQ6 designed quilt patterns, “And The Greatest of These is Love.” The patterns are all wedding themed, however, as the book explains the designs are not exclusive to wedding projects. Kathy’s quilts are designed in EQ6 to be a quick and easy, yet beautifully graphic and Mary enjoys a combination of appliqué and pieced for the more advanced quilter. You can find their new book in many individual quilt shops across the country or visit their site. Plans to follow up with a volume 2 are in the works. Congratulations on the new book, Ladies!