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EQ is a quilt design software but we can use it for more than quilt designs.  Have you ever considered making a cloth book for children celebrating different types of playtime?  You can easily accomplish this without sewing a single seam. Open your EQ8 and create a project name ‘Childs Eyeview of Lazy Days of Summer’.  Lazy days would include quiet play, reading, learning while playing, or making up songs and stories around simple images.  For very young children, all life is play! Confirm the name of the project is showing at the top of your screen. Click on the block worktable icon on the upper right corner of the screen. Click on BLOCK>New Block> Easy Draw at the upper left area above the worktable. At the top of the worktable enter a block size of 8 inches with snaps vertical and horizontal set at 32. Click on the line

This month we will be learning four different ways to make Medallion Quilts. The first way is the easiest. #1 Using a Block From the Library Open EQ8 Click Design a Quilt from Scratch Click Horizontal Click the LAYOUT tab Under NUMBER OF BLOCKS Horizontal: 1 Vertical: 1 Under FINISHED SIZE OF BLOCKS Width: 30 Height: 30 Click the BORDERS tab Under Select a Border Style choose: Long Horizontal Under BORDER SIZE make all sides: 4 Click the DESIGN tab Click Open Library Under EQ Libraries > EQ8 Libraries > 01 Classic Pieced >Whole Top Designs - choose a block. The example is using Diamonds in Squares. Click Add to Sketchbook. Click Close. Click Block Tools Click Set Block, and click on the quilt worktable to set your block. Design the quilt as you would like. You can edit the block on the Block Worktable, recolor the block, or whatever you want

  Welcome to  Design and Sew 2 Lessons with Yvonne.  This is lesson five (5) in this series and the last lesson of this series.  We will be looking at blocks and changing the EQ8 program/project settings to edit existing block drawings.  We will also continue working with unique layouts for quilts built into the program library.  Color plays a significant role in how we view the quilts and we will discover how to change the color settings in the EQ8 program. Be sure to watch the video at the end of the blog first to get a feel for how the lesson will be laid out.  A picture is worth a million words! We want to see what you have created in this series of lessons so be sure to add your comments and images of your layouts to the blog in the comments box at the bottom. Refer back

Welcome to Design and Sew 2 –Lessons with Yvonne.  This is lesson four (4) in the series.  In this lesson, we will highlight text and it’s applications in the EQ8 program.  Text can be used in so many different ways to enhance our quilts.  We will explore the use of text and how to make it a feature in your quilt designs.  We will also look at different fabrics and layout options as unique backgrounds for our text elements. The video for this lesson is at the bottom of the blog page.  I suggest you watch the video to start with and then do the written lesson after.  This way you will have a good idea as to how we are going to step through the lesson to create the quilt designs. A picture is worth a thousand words, and when creating different text styles in one layout it is easier

This month we will be learning how to draw two different braid blocks. The lesson also covers some EasyDraw drawing basics. Let’s get started! Click Design a block from scratch Click Pieced Click EasyDraw In the Precision Bar set the following: Block Width: 6 Block Height: 6 Snaps Horizontal: 12 Snaps Vertical: 12 Graph Paper Cells: on Graph Paper Horizontal: 12 Graph Paper Vertical: 12 Snapping Options – Snap to grid points on worktable: on Snapping Options – Snap to nodes of drawing: on Snapping Options – Snap to lines and arcs of drawing: off Make sure the Line tool is selected Start drawing the block as shown. Draw all the V shapes first. Continue to draw as shown. You should have one grid dot in between all the points of the V’s. Draw in the lines to finish off the braid block. Click Add to Project Sketchbook . If

Welcome to Design and Sew 2 – Lessons with Yvonne.  This is lesson three (3) in this series. I hope you have enjoyed the first two lessons with this series.  We are continuing with creating quilts in the EQ8 program without having to draw our blocks.  There are thousands of blocks built into the program that we can use as they are or edit them slightly to create a block unique to us.  This is also true for quilt layouts.  There are many quilt layouts all ready for us to explore and add our unique touch to make them specific to us.  This is a stand-alone lesson and you do not have to do the first two lessons in the series to do this one.  However, we learn new tips and techniques in each lesson so you may want to try the lesson without doing any sewing of your designs

As crafting people, we rarely do only one type of craft.  Sewing, knitting, crocheting, painting, embroidery, photography, quilting, card making, and so much more are creative expressions of ourselves.  Working with fabrics is my first choice of creativity.  I love to work with fabrics, threads, designing, digitizing,  and piecing it all together to create one cohesive design. EQ8 is a quilt design program that uses graphics to help us ‘see’ how our actual project will look finished while still in the ‘virtual world’ of creativity.  As an educator for both machine embroidery and quilting, I can use my EQ8 to merge both of these creative loves of mine.  For those of you who still have EQ7 with the EQStitch add-on program, you can create embroidery directly in your program.  Everyone else uses another software program to create their embroidery.   Have you ever wondered why EQ has an embroidery library?  If