I have had a lot of questions about creating personal libraries in EQ8.  Many of you want to create your own libraries containing your favorite fabrics from your Stash or from a particular manufacturer.   If you have taken pictures of your stash and imported them into EQ8 or have imported other fabrics into EQ8, you can create and store them in their own library.

Electric Quilt allows you to set up your own fabric libraries under My Favorite Fabrics.  When you create your own library, the fabrics that you put into it will be available to use in any project you want to design.

Here is how to create that space.

  1. Open EQ8.
  2. Go to the top Main Menu and click LIBRARIES, choose Fabric Library.  The dialogue box will open.
  3. Select the My Favorite Fabrics section.
  4. Click the Create Library button and the Add new Library dialogue will open.
  5. Enter a Name for your library.  (Hint: I like to add by fabric manufacturer and then add the different lines as subcategories underneath that.  You may want to store by color or maybe type of fabric like 30’s or batiks.)
  6. Choose the the number of styles or sub categories you would like.  Hint: A style might have the fabric likes, or maybe you group by colors.  Use whatever makes the most sense to how you design.)  You can add up to 59 styles but you can always change that so I start with 10.  Click OK.
  7. You now have created your own library!

 Copying the fabrics you want to add to My Fabric Favorites

  1.  Open the Fabric Library
  2. Click to choose the section of the library where you want to copy your fabrics from.  If you have imported pictures of fabric in your Sketchbook, you would click on the sketchbook.  If you have imported fabrics, you would go to the Import Results section.  In this example, I have imported in the Princess Palette by Mirah Batiks and they are in the Import results.
  3. Select the fabrics you want to add.  Click the Copy button.  You can hold down the CTRL/CMD key to select additional fabrics.
 

 Add and Save the fabrics to My Favorite Fabrics.

  1. Click on the My Favorite Fabrics section
  2. Click on the library name.  In this example, Mirah Batiks.
  3. Click the style name you want to add the fabrics to.  For this example, we are going to add them to Style 1.
  4. Click the Paste button.  You can add up to 254 fabrics to each style.
  5. Lets name the style, right click on Style 1.  A dialogue box will open.  Click on Modify Style.
  6. Enter the name of the Style.  In this example, the swatches copied were The Princess Palette collection by Mirah Batiks.
  7. Click Save Library button.  Click OK.
  8. You fabrics will now be added into the style of your own fabric library.
  9. You can always go back and update the library name and the number of styles.  Just right-click on the library name and click to Modify Library.
  10. Enter a new name or new number of styles.  Click OK.

Deleting fabrics from My Library

  1. Go to the top Main Menu and click LIBRARIES, choose Fabric Library.  The dialogue box will open.
  2. Select the My Favorite Fabrics section.
  3. Open the Library and then the style containing the fabrics you want to delete.
  4. Select the items to be deleted.  Click the delete button.  Click OK.
  5. Click Save Library when you are through deleting to save the new version of the style without the deleted fabrics.  If you delete all the fabrics, the style will be empty.  You can then rename the library and style to reuse again.

Deleting an entire My Fabric Favorites library.

  1. You will need to go to Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and open (My) Documents/My EQ8/User Favorites.
  2. You should see your My Library files there.
  3. Click the file you want to delete.  Press your keyboard Delete key.  This will delete the entire library, including all styles within that library.
Hint:  If you want to add your own personal Block Libraries, the process is the same using the Block Library, My Favorite Blocks.
 

For More Information:

Go here for more information  Importing Fabric from the web, a camera or scanner.

Remember, there are many more fabrics already built into EQ8 besides what you will find in each default project.  You can find them under the Fabric libraries from the Main Menu and add fabrics to your projects from there.

There are additional free fabric downloads every month on the DOYouEQ.com website

And you can always purchase additional fabric swatches from the Stash files available  HERE.

Questions or Feedback?
Please share your ideas, questions and feedback in the comments. I would love to hear from you. Thanks!
 
 
Lori J. Miller lives in Oxford, Michigan, where she designs, stitches and sews quilts and quilty things. She loves experimenting with fun colors and designs to make playful and clever products for the modern sewist.  Sewing since age 11, Lori has deep roots in sewing and quilting traditions that add a unique dimension to her designs.  An Electric Quilt 8 Super fan, you can follow her quilting adventures on her blog at lorimillerdesigns.com , on instagram @lorimillerdesigns  or on Facebook at Lori Miller Designs.