The Electric Quilt Company is a pretty small group and many of us crossover in our job duties. Whenever we would pass around a greeting card for all the employees to sign, Jan would always sign the card as “Jan-In Shipping” as if we could possibly be confused by any other “Jan.” Jan is a chatterbox of energy in our office who keeps us all in stitches (no pun intended) with her quick-witted one-liners or her Pig Latin conversations with Heidi. If you’ve ever called the “sales” line at Electric Quilt, you may have spoken with Jan.

Jan and her daughter, Ashley.

Jan lives just around the block from me and her daughters and my sons attended the same elementary school, junior high and high school. We attended school events together, chaperoned proms and so on for years. I think you’re a lucky person if you have friends at work who are also friends outside of work.

Jan’s oldest daughter, Ashley, is having a baby in January and so, of course, I wanted to make a baby quilt. Once again EQ’s quilt extraordinaire, Margaret, advised me with my fabric selections. She even contributed some fabric from her personal stash! I settled on a herringbone design for the front and large chevrons across the back. I was shooting for “vintage” on the front and “modern” on the back.

Again, I used EQStitch to generate files for the quilting. I chose “Flowing Foliage Border” from Volume 7. It was perfect running down each strip of the herringbone. This time, instead of hooping the whole sandwich, I used double-stick tape on the top of my hoop and large clips to hold the quilt sandwich in place. It was so fast this way! I had the whole top quilted in two evenings.

Ashley loves her cat, Ty, and so I thought of that as I made her label. If you’ve never used EQ7 to make a quilt label, then you’re really missing out! It is easy and super fun. We have a video on our website that demos how we do it. https://doyoueq.com/lessons/creating-quilt-labels-in-eq7/

I drew the cat holding the empty sign as a Patchdraw motif block, and drew 1 paw as a separate motif.

When I built the quilt, I set two paw motifs on Layer 2. I made a horizontal 1×1 quilt with no borders and set the cat motif on Layer 1. If you try this at home, you may see this “blue note” message:

This message reminds you how to enable EQ7 to set motifs on Layer 1.

Click Quilt>Quilt Worktable Options and uncheck this restriction.

Now I have my cat motif sitting on Layer 1.

Then I went to Layer 2 and added the paws and text.

I used File > Export Image and then changed to the Image worktable to open and print on fabric.

I really loved how this turned out.

So here I am at the baby shower with Ashley and the quilt. I think this girl is going to make a wonderful mother, and I know that “Jan-In Shipping” will be the best-ever fun and crazy grandmother (or grand “smother”, as she calls herself). I know there’s been a ton of research done on the benefits of giving—not just for the recipients but for the givers. Nothing could have made me happier than giving this quilt to Ashley. I hope all of you get to experience that gift of giving with your quiltmaking, your money, your volunteerism, whatever it is that you do. Do it today. It’s good for you and your community.