I’m Kevin Kosbab is a freelance writer and designer whose patterns for quilts and sewing projects appear in magazines including Stitch, American Patchwork and Quilting, and Quilter’s World. I produce modern patterns for creative quilters under the Feed Dog Designs label. Interweave released my video Secrets of Home Décor Sewing on DVD and as a download in June 2012. I”m currently working on my first quilting book, also with Interweave. I live in northern California with my partner and a handful of quadrupeds. Find out more on my blog or website. Like many quilters who lean to the modern side, I have lots of solid fabrics in my stash. I’ve also got a custom library full of them in EQ7. I know it sounds crazy—after all, solids of virtually any color are right there in the Colors tab of the Paintbrush palette. Bear with me: there are actually several reasons why a library of solid swatches isn’t as counterintuitive
Lesson Spotlight
The Benefits of Designing with Solid Colors in EQ7 from FeedDog
Posted 11-20-2012 by Sarah | Posted in: Lesson Spotlight
Electric Quilt 7 Organization with Folders and Exported Images, by Sandi Walton of Piecemeal Quilts
Posted 11-06-2012 by Sarah | Posted in: Lesson Spotlight
I just had a light bulb moment. Maybe (probably) I’m not the first person to think of this, but I’m so pleased with the results that I want to share it anyway. If you’re like me, you spend as much time on EQ7 as you do actually sewing quilts, maybe even more. After a while, we’ve accumulated so many EQ projects that it’s hard to find anything anymore. While I was reading an Electric Quilt message board, someone posed this very problem, and a possible solution occurred to me. I jumped right over to EQ to see if it worked and – joy! – it does. A little backup information: You don’t have to open EQ7 and then open the project. You can navigate to the folder that the projects are stored in and double click the project to open it. Also, you don’t have to keep all of your
EQ’s Flowering Snowball Block – Putting it all together from Angela Pingel
Posted 10-25-2012 by Sarah | Posted in: Lesson Spotlight
Angela Pingel of Cut to Pieces is one of our EQ Gurus. She’s a modern quilter using EQ7 to make designing easier and she will have some great tips and ideas to share here on the EQ blog and on her Cut to Pieces blog. Angela recently designed and made a pillow top in EQ and wanted to share some images with us. She writes, “I just completed a pillow top that I designed in EQ using the Flowering Snowball block in EQ. It’s a fairly complicated block you all have in there so I thought you might want to see some pics of it being sewn.” Yes, we would! There are so many EQers that will really appreciate that you took the time to show this here on the EQ blog. Angela has taken some great photographs of how she put this block together. Check out the Cut to Pieces blog. Angela
Packer Tracker from Sandi Walton
Posted 10-23-2012 by Sarah | Posted in: Lesson Spotlight
My name is Sandi Walton of Piecemeal Quilts. I am from Wisconsin, and I’ve been quilting since 2003. I’ve been using EQ for a while now and I’m a DoYouEQ Artist. Check out my blog to learn more about me. Have you seen some of the quilting books and magazines available now that feature individual blocks? Books like “Modern Blocks: 99 Quilt Blocks from Your Favorite Designers” or “The Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns: 4050 Pieced Blocks for Quilters” and magazines like Quiltmaker’s “100 Blocks. They’re wonderful resources for quilters, but they can become even better resources when you use EQ7 to see how the block would look repeated, recolored, twisted or with different layouts. Check out this modern block I created in EQ7. I’m calling it Packer Tracker because it looks a bit like train tracks and it’s in Green Bay Packer colors (hey, I’m from Wisconsin). It’s a relatively
The EQ Dozen from The Virtual Quilter
Posted 10-09-2012 by Sarah | Posted in: Lesson Spotlight
I have been the Virtual Quilter since September, 2008. For the first couple of months it seemed so easy, because I had quite a few project files which would never see the light of day without a blog with a title like Virtual Quilter. However, a few months down the track and I started to panic … there weren’t near as many designs I wanted to share as I thought … not when I was sharing one every day! I started a new project file, called it EQ Dozen, selected a dozen blocks from the Electric Quilt block library, added fabrics from the Electric Quilt fabric library, and started playing. Well, that is the short story! I am going to let you in on a little secret … I didn’t select just 12 blocks. I selected more like 30 or forty blocks, added some fabrics and started playing. Over a
PatchDraw Is Not For Appliqué Alone! From Angie Padilla
Posted 09-25-2012 by Sarah | Posted in: Lesson Spotlight
I am Angie Padilla of Angie’s Bitz ‘n Pieces Designs. My love of quilting eventually took over more and more of my time, until I finally decided to take the plunge and in 2003 set up a new business and now I am a full-time as quiltmaker, designer, and teacher. I’m also the author of EQ6 Applique Drawing book (now out of print. But get a free PDF chapter from the book here.). A few days ago one of my friends was showing me her latest crochet project. The family has been planning a big outdoor celebration later this month, so she has been crocheting some beautiful pitcher covers for each of the tables. Then she sighed: “It would have been fun to make these out of fabric, but I just couldn’t find a pattern for them.” I had never heard of a pitcher cover before, and after an online search