Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

Our regular blogger Sarah Shriver just had her baby girl this morning. A big CONGRATULATIONS to Sarah. We can’t wait to meet your new bundle of joy!

I was paging through the new issue (March/April 2011) of McCall’s Quilting magazine and saw the most refreshing spring pattern. I wondered if Dorothy Ann Weld used EQ to design her “Ode to the Flower” quilt featured on pages 72 and 73, so I emailed her. Here’s what Dorothy Ann says: “Hi Andrea, I did indeed use EQ to design this quilt. I have the MOST fun designing. This quilt was submitted and accepted about a year ago. McCall’s works that far out and sometimes even further. I have one coming out in the July/Aug issue and another as far out as March 2012. I’ve learned A LOT! It’s exciting, but it is also fascinating. I’ve designed on EQ5, upgraded to 6 and now EQ7. This quilt was designed on EQ6 as 7 had not been released. I love designing on the applique setting. I create a motif, copy, rotate

We’ve marked down the 6 packs of our EQ Printables Regular Inkjet Fabric, Premium Cotton Lawn and Premium Cotton Satin fabric sheets for a limited time. Get them at 20% off until January 24th, 2011 9am Eastern. http://www.electricquilt.com/Shop/Printing/Fabric.asp

I thought it would be fun to take a moment this Monday and design a little quilt with houses and snow on the rooftops, maybe some trees. Then I remembered, “duh. Town & Country Patchwork has them already.” So I went in and found this cute tablerunner under Mountain Trails > Autumn Evening Wall Quilt, and recolored it with snowy fabrics and lots of blues. What winter projects are you working on?

This was a tech support question earlier today. It’s neat the way such a simple block creates such a fun 3D design. The block is a simple Attic Window drawn at the halfway point instead of in thirds. To make the quilt diagonally pieceable in rows (sewing the triangles together into diagonal rows), add a diagonal line through the small square too. That’s the way the block is drawn in the project. If you would rather delete the extra line from the block, you’ll be piecing together hexagons when you go to sew the quilt together.

I was paging through a recent issue of Quilters Newsletter magazine and who did I see? None other than longtime EQ user Nancy Mahoney. I saw that there were only blocks and thought “what, where’s the quilt?” Then I realized, “wow. She’s doing the Mystery Quilt over several issues!” Mystery Quilts are a lot of fun for readers and a lot of work for authors. So congratulations Nancy on all your hard work. I can’t wait to see how the Mystery Quilt turns out. When I asked Nancy about the quilt she said: “Yes, of course, I used EQ… I’d be lost without it! I’d never get anything done!” For those of you who are interested in getting started with Nancy’s Mystery Quilt. Check out the Dec/Jan 2011 issue of Quilters Newsletter. The lessons will run for six issues, making the Oct/Nov issue the last one. Visit Nancy’s website to