Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

As promised here is BLOCK #1 of our 2011 Block of the Month on our blog. It’s called January Jumble. Deadline for submitting your block picture to webmaster@electricquilt.com for a chance to win is February 18, 2011 8am Eastern. Click here to download the EQ7 project for January. Use any fabrics you want! Use your favorites! Challenge yourself with a new color scheme! If you have EQ7, you can try out the colors before cutting the fabric for the block. Here are some colorway ideas: Download rotary cutting in this colorway. (PDF) Download rotary cutting in this colorway. (PDF) Download foundation piecing. (PDF) Download foundation piecing. (PDF) Download templates. (PDF) Download templates. (PDF) Download rotary cutting in this colorway. (PDF) Download rotary cutting in this colorway. (PDF) Download foundation piecing. (PDF) Download foundation piecing. (PDF) Download templates. (PDF) Download templates. (PDF) Sew the block and send your picture to webmaster@electricquilt.com.

Use any or all of the letters in our company name: The Electric Quilt Company Make as many words as you can. • For each new word, you can use as many or as few of the available letters as you’d like. • Use only the letters available. For example: There are only 3 letter E’s in our full company name. So you may use no more than 3 letter E’s in any one word. • You may not use the proper name of a person as a word. For example: Ellie would not count as a word, because it is a person’s name. • Words must be in English. (Sorry to all our wonderful non-English-speaking users!) The winner wins an Amy Butler Softwares program. To enter, send an email with 1) your list of words and 2) the total number of words (one guess per person) before January 31,

This March, Andrea Bishop will be teaching EQ classes in Bloomington, IN at the Bloomington Convention Center. See information on these classes below and then look for more EQ class opportunities on our website. Date: Thursday, March 3, 2011 Time: Morning, 9 am – Noon Instructor: Andrea Bishop Class: #501 Electric Quilt Basics Where: Indiana Heritage Quilt Show, Bloomington Convention Center (302 South College Ave, Bloomington, IN 47403) http://ihqs.org/2011Workshops.html If you want to EQ and don’t know how, this is the class for you! Start from scratch and cover the basics of Electric Quilt software. You will learn how designing, coloring, drawing, saving, and printing work. You will make a few quilts and blocks, and then see what your patterns look like. By the end of this class you will have the skills to create and print designs of your own. For EQ6 & EQ7 users. Supplies Cost: $35 Date:

This year at EQ we are going to do a Block of the Month. We have 12 brand new blocks drawn in EQ7 for the next 12 months. The Block of the Month will be available to EQers and non-EQers alike. An EQ7 project file and PDF of the pattern will be available from our blog each month. Now for the fun part. If you sew your block that month and email us a picture for us to post on our site, you get one entry for the contest to win a free Kaleidoscope Collection CD (add-on for EQ5, EQ6, or EQ7). If you sew all 12 blocks and email in pictures, you get 12 entries. (One entry per person per month.) At the end of the 12 months we will have a layout challenge. We will post some layout ideas, but we want to see what you can come

OK, first check out Nancy’s amazing website & gallery to see why I always go gaga over her designs: www.nancyrinkdesigns.com/gallery.html I think the parts that push me over the edge are her borders. Not only are the quilt centers gorgeous, but the borders just make her quilts spectacular. She is sooo creative. Nancy Rink has been a longtime EQer. She once said: “EQ allows me to see endless color and design options before I even cut a piece of fabric. Electric Quilt is definitely a must have for quilters.” I saw her new “Stars of the Olde West” quilt pattern in the McCall’s Quilting March/April issue and just had to let you know. Check out pages 26-29 to get the pattern for her new design. She also has the kit available from her website. Here’s what Nancy says about the new quilt: “For Stars of the Olde West I “borrowed”

Wilma Simons wrote me today and said she uses EQ to design her quilts. Here is Wilma’s website: http://dekenstikster.web-log.nl/de_dekenstikster/ Although I can only partially decipher what the page says, I think the pictures speak for themselves. If you get the chance, check out the 3 blocks she has made so far for Barbara Brackman’s Civil War Quilts project. Every Saturday Barbara posts a new block and a tale. Wilma has chosen some great red & white fabrics for her project.

Black is such a great color to make designs pop. I saw a quilt (appropriately named) “Black Beauty” in the March/April issue of McCall’s Quilting magazine. Jennifer Bosworth used EQ to design the pattern, so I thought I’d ask her more about it. Jennifer says: “I did finalize the design in EQ6. I had sketched it initially on graph paper and then it was nice to bring in the fabrics and drawings and audition different fabrics. Designing a quilt with EQ allows me to see exactly what my finished quilt will look like. I can audition several fabric and color variations before settling on the perfect combination! I would definitely recommend this software to anyone that enjoys designing their own quilts!” The quilt uses a really pretty black and pink floral from Marti Michell’s “Wild Roses” collection for Maywood Studio. Get the March/April 2011 issue of McCall’s Quilting to have