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Many optical illusion and 3D quilts can be designed with 60° triangles, which means you can use 60° triangle rulers! Also, if you’re interested in triangle quilts you may also want to check out Design & Discover – Quilts with Triangles! Let’s get started! Click Design a quilt from scratch Click either Horizontal Strip or Vertical Strip. (I’ll be using Vertical Strip.) Click the LAYOUT tab Under Select a strip style choose Points A If you don’t want your triangles to be 60° skip down to step 8. If you want 60° (isometric) triangles for a Strip Quilt: Use this calculator  to figure out the width and height you would need. For example, if your strip is 50 inches long, with 10 triangles they would be 5 inches on one side…because 50/10=5. According to the calculator if one side is 5 inches the width needs to be 4.33 inches.In other

EasyDraw is for pieced blocks. You can also use PolyDraw, or Applique. With EasyDraw all the lines must touch each other and/or the edges of the block. Think of your lines as seams. For example, in the first block the lines do not touch the edges.  The center pieces are “floating”. When you click the COLOR tab you won’t see the diamond. You couldn’t piece the first block, so you can’t draw it that way in EasyDraw either! In the second block, lines are added. Now, you could sew it, and it appears correctly on the COLOR tab. There are a few other things you want to consider BEFORE you start drawing your block: the block size and the precision bar settings. Block Size Let’s say you want to draw the log cabin block below and want the finished block to be 12 inches x 12 inches. If you analyze

Disappearing 9-patch blocks are extremely popular to use in quilts.  They are easy to make in EQ8 using the Serendipity tools.  With just a few clicks you can see all the different variations of a 9-patch block using EQ8. Open your EQ8 program and create a new project called Disappearing 9 Patch.   Be sure to click the OK at the bottom of the box. Open the view sketchbook and locate the built-in EQ8 9-patch design. Select the 9-patch and then click on EDIT at the bottom of the box.  This will place the design on the block worktable. The block worktable opens up on the DRAW tab of the block worktable. Click on the COLOR tab at the top of the screen and recolor the block as below. Add to sketchbook  At the top of the screen, click on the BLOCK heading and select Serendipity>Clip and Flip. The Clip and

First of all, you definitely don’t have to manually color each individual patch to make a quilt look scrappy! Lots of times if you are planning on sewing a scrappy quilt you wouldn’t be using the specific red fabric you’re coloring your quilt with, you would just be using a red from your stash anyways. So, the first step is just to not overthink it!  But, here are a few different ways to make this job a little faster. In this Wedding Ring Quilt I used the Ctrl/Cmd to color the blocks with the Paintbrush tool, which colors the same patch in all matching blocks on the current layer, and ended up with this quilt… Once you have a quilt designed and colored like in Step 1, click the DESIGN tab > Block Tools Use the Rotate and Flip tools to break up the repetitive fabrics. For example, here is

Making a Lone Star quilt in EQ8 is easy! There are a few different options. A Lone Star Block First try checking in the Block Library. Click Libraries > Block Library > 01 Classic Pieced > Lone Stars. There are 29 block options. You can also edit any of these blocks. If you would like to use one of these blocks click on the block and click Add to Sketchbook. Click NEW QUILT > Layout > Horizontal Under NUMBER OF BLOCKS make the quilt 1 x 1 Under FINISHED SIZE OF BLOCKS make the block the size you want your finished quilt to be (minus any border). Click the DESIGN tab > Block Tools > Set Block Click on the block and click on the quilt to set it. Click the Fabric Tools an use the coloring tools to recolor the quilt. Click Add to Project Sketchbook    for any

I love having a quick and easy Easter design handy for the grandkids.  I don’t always have time to make a quilt, but my EQ8 program will produce an easy outline to help the kids be creative with paints or crayons to color a design I create. Open your EQ8 program and name a new project ‘Easter’ on the opening page. At the top of the screen, click on LIBRARIES>Block Library In the bottom of the library box, click on the word ‘search’ > “by notecard”. When the notecard box opens, type in the word ‘bunny’ and then click on the word ‘search’ at the bottom of the box. The results box will list how many items you have in EQ8 that fit this word.  Click on the OK at the bottom of the box to see the results. Scroll through the search results and click on any one of

Let’s see how this month’s free project Lucky Leaves was designed. You can download the project here. Be sure to check out the other free projects available. There are over 320 to choose from! The project includes 51 new fabrics! And this cute block!   Here is how to design this quilt: Click the NEW QUILT > Horizontal Click the LAYOUT tab Under NUMBER OF BLOCKS make the Horizontal and Vertical: 2 Under FINISHED SIZE OF BLOCKS make the Width and Height: 9 Under FINISHED SIZE OF SASHING make the Width and Height: .75 Click the BORDERS tab For the first border’s style choose Corner Blocks and make all sides: .75 For the second border’s style choose Long Horizontal and make all sides: 2.250 For the third border’s style choose Long Horizontal and make all sides: .250 Click the DESIGN tab > Block Tools > Set Block Click on the