The Electric Quilt Company is 30!
The Electric Quilt Company’s Story – How It All Began
We’re celebrating 30 years! Since the pearl is the traditional symbol for 30 years, we’re sharing EQ Pearls of Wisdom from our friends! See all Pearls of Wisdom posts. We hope you enjoy the tips and tricks you learn along the way and discover some new quilters or catch up with your favorites! Also, we’d love to hear about YOUR journey with EQ so feel free to tell us your story in the comments on any post! A big THANK YOU to all our customers for your support over the years. We’re looking forward to many more! 
This week’s featured friend: Alyce Blyth!
Tell us a bit about yourself Alyce!
I started quilting 10 years ago this year, when my husband had seen me reading a lot about quilting (with the plan to make my two little children a quilt each when they turned 5… a few years off still) and told me to stop reading and start doing. So he bought me a little $100 sewing machine, and my life started down a whole new path! With a whole lot of experimenting and assistance from blogs, I taught myself to quilt stitch by stitch, project by project… and have also upgraded my sewing machine, too!
Since then, I’ve gone on to make a career out of this art we all love so much through independent patterns, magazine commissions, blog tutorials, two books – DIY Block Design and Mini Masterpieces – teaching classes in person and online, and partnering with top sewing brands including Electric Quilt, Aurifil, AccuQuilt, and Pfaff.
When did you start using Electric Quilt and how has it changed your quilting life?
I started with EQ7 a few years ago primarily because I was wanting to design foundation paper pieced blocks myself, but it quickly became a core step in mocking up quilt designs either for my own quilt patterns, or to submit professional diagrams to magazines for commissions.
Ripples sampler quilt in EQ
Ripples sampler quilt from Mini Masterpieces
EQ8 was also invaluable in helping me write my book, Mini Masterpieces, as it helped me to not only mock up all the designs for my proposal, but also helped me plan the final quilts with colour placement and using the actual fabric prints in my sketches.
I have also found that EQ8 has helped strengthen and enhance my creativity in general. I love to design quilts, even if they never get made, and being able to quickly and easily sketch and edit makes the process even more enjoyable!
What is your EQ “Pearl of Wisdom” for EQ users?
I love to rotate quilt blocks in the quilt layout to see what happens to quilt designs when you play around with the block layout. If your quilt blocks aren’t symmetrical, you can find some fun and unexpected new layout options just by simply rotating the quilt blocks! Learn more about rotating and recolouring blocks here.
You can find quite a few of my favourite EQ8 tips and tricks on my blog under the EQ8 category.
What are you up to now and what do you have coming up?
I’m currently running a free monthly quilt block tutorial series on my blog where we’ll be scrap busting as well as playing with different quilt layouts for these blocks using EQ8! And next month, I’ll be opening enrollment for the November round of my online sampler block community, Women Of Advent. Plus of course all the fun patterns I have sketched out in EQ8 and have planned out to release over the coming months! To follow along for updates, be sure to check out my website and sign up for my newsletter, or check me out on Instagram – @BlossomHeartQuilts.
Giveaway
The Tic Tac Toe quilt block tutorial is one of the most popular I’ve ever written, with so many options for playing with colour and fussy cutting in the large and simple block patches.
Download the project for Tic Tac Toe here!
Tic Tac Toe designed by Alyce for EQ
- Hope you enjoyed this “pearl” of wisdom. Feel free to share your EQ story or a “pearl” of your own in the comments! Stay tuned for our next post!
