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We had the grand kids visiting for a couple weeks before Christmas.  It was difficult to keep them entertained.  One evening we went to a sing-along in the village where we live to sing Christmas carols with other neighbors.  The 5 year old got bored really quick.  At one point someone was asked to offer up a prayer for everyone.  This particular person does like to go on and on when he is asked to give a blessing.  Even the adults are impatient for the prayer to end!  Of course, leave it to a kid to put it into perspective.  He covered his ears after several minutes and started saying, blah,blah, blah, blah!!!  Thank goodness most of the adults are hard of hearing and did not notice. I didn’t know whether to laugh or quiet him immediately.   Turn those special moments into cartoon character images and add text to

The Electric Quilt Company turns 25 in 2016 and we’re going all out! You’ll see contests and giveaways on our blog all year long, social media promotions on Facebook and Instagram, videos, grand prizes and more! We are so excited to celebrate with our friends, fans and supporters! Subscribe to our email list for complete information on all our 25th festivities. You won’t want to miss a thing! Use the hashtag #EQ25 on social media throughout the 2016 as much as possible! Pair the hashtag with something related to EQ and you may be chosen to win a prize! Each month, we’ll host a contest right here on our blog featuring one of our awesome sponsors. If you enter into a monthly blog contest, you’ll be entered into the grand prize giveaway (pictured below). Winners for these prizes will be announced in December. 1st Place Grand Prize (valued at $2,000+):

Every once in awhile The Electric Quilt Company will release “updates” or “new builds” for its programs. If you are getting a message to update when you open EQ7, it is trying to alert you that a newer build of the program is available (for free). A new build or update usually contains enhancements to current features and behind the scenes fixes to make your software run more smoothly. EQ7 (Mac and PC) and EQStitch are currently on Build 3. You can see the differences between EQ7 Build 1 and Build 2 here, and Build 2 and Build 3 here. You don’t need to update right away, these updates will always be available for download from our website, so just pick a time that is convenient for you. To see what build you are currently on, open EQ7 then click Help > About EQ… EQ will show you what build

I hope everyone had a great Christmas this last week.  I am busy writing lessons during this holiday season.  I write lessons several weeks/months in advance.  Right now I am looking at what lesson content I will include in the upcoming EQ Academy retreat in Ohio.  There are a few openings left so be sure to head on over to the EQ website and register soon.  This is the very best way to learn a software program with hands on lessons and step by step instruction.  The interaction with other students with the same interests also adds to the learning . Open the EQStitch program. Name a new project called ‘Teach Me Well’. Set the preferences for the project back to the default settings of the software. Relaunch the program and open the existing project named ‘Teach Me Well’. Click on the ‘work on stitching’ icon at the top of

Personalize a very special snowflake design using the freehand drawing tool in EQStitch.  This design stitches very fast and would make a great design to stitch on a kids napkin for your Christmas Holiday meal. Open your EQStitch program and set the preferences back to the default settings. Click  on the ‘work on stitching’ worktable Click on the patch fill icon on the properties bar at the top of the screen to turn it off. Click on the drawing board options and  set the embroidery edge stitch to a bean stitch, and set the embroidery fill stitch to a no fill option. Click on the freehand drawing tool and click/hold/drag/release the mouse while you write your name with cursive handwriting. Click on the name with the pick tool and rotate it so it is vertical on the page. Click on the ‘clone selected segments’ icon   to make a copy of the

If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ll notice that each year around this time, we have a cute little visitor to our site: It’s our friend, Sunbonnet Sue, and she has the very important job of decorating the tree each year! She holds a special place in our hearts here at EQ and I thought I’d share a little bit about her story today. Penny McMorris & Dean Neumann, EQ founders The Sunbonnet Sue animation was created by Dean Neumann, EQ co-founder and programmer. She made her first appearance on our site back in 1996, shortly after our first website was launched. EQ3 was our current version of the software at that time. Electric Quilt 1 – 7 Product Boxes EQ3 could only export PCX files (PiCture eXchange) for images. Dean made the animation by drawing individual blocks on the Block Worktable for each of the movements. He

The January/February issue of Quiltmaker is now available. You’ll find the EQ7 Creative Spark article on page 28! This Creative Spark focuses on the Custom Set layout. Using a custom set quilt layout gives you a “blank canvas” on which you can set blocks of different sizes and shapes. Emily Bailey’s Bear Scraps quilt uses three different block sizes. Once you have your custom set quilt designed in EQ7, you can easily try out other blocks in the same layout. Blank custom set layout in EQ7 Auditioning different blocks in the same layout If you’d like to learn more about Custom Set, here’s a video with an overview of the feature: You can find the companion EQ7 lesson for the article on Quiltmaker’s site: Designing a Custom Set Quilt in EQ7