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Sunday Stitch

EQStitch Sunday Stitch #8

Posted 09-20-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Favorite Posts Sunday Stitch

How many of you are ‘Cross over Crafters’?  By this I mean, how many of you do more than one type of crafting and use the elements of one type of craft in another type of craft.  I suspect many of you are like this.  It is great that our EQ program allows us to be quilters and machine embroidery enthusiasts and combine the two loves in one program. But, I do more than that.  I often use the artwork in the EQ7 side of the program and capture it to use in other programs.  I often just print the artwork onto fabric and then use that as the guidelines for my free motion thread painting. EQStitch allows me to create designs that I use in quilting, home decor, clothing, and crafting of all sorts.  A very simple design can add an impressive expression to other projects.  Have you ever

EQStitch Sunday Stitch #7

Posted 09-13-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Favorite Posts Sunday Stitch

There is an old expression ‘The Devil is in The Details’.  Loosely translated, if applied to machine embroidery, it means that the finished project may look good, but the process of the stitching may not be satisfactory.  The details of how you digitized a design are as important as the finished project.  Think of a red work design.  It is all one color and ideally will stitch from one element to the next without a lot of tie off stitches or jumps.  The back of the work will look as smooth and finished as the front of the work.  Yet, we have all come across designs that look great but stitch very erradically jumping from one spot to another.  How annoying!  The smoothest stitch out considers the ‘pathing’ of the design.  With EQStitch we can use basic shapes and set them to path correctly to avoid these jump stitches. 1.

EQStitch Sunday Stitch #6

Posted 09-06-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Sunday Stitch

I really don’t like to think of Christmas before the month of December.  Everyone seems to start preparing for Christmas earlier and earlier every year.  I was in one of my local stores in July and they were all ready placing out their Christmas items.  By the time Christmas actually arrives I am really tired of it all.  I don’t like the commercial aspect of it.  But, as a machine embroiderer/quilter, I know it takes a good deal of time to create projects that you want to give away as Christmas gifts.  This is a quick and easy design to stitch with a Christmas theme. 1.  Open your EQStitch program and then click on the ‘stitch worktable icon’ and set up the machine applique worktable. 2.  On the artwork tab, click on the ‘oval drawing tool’ (heart shaped) and hold the icon down for a few seconds to get the

EQStitch Sunday Stitch #5

Posted 08-30-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Sunday Stitch

What are ‘add-on’s’ and what will they do for us?  An add-on is an additional feature that when added to a program it will expand it’s capabilities.  This is what we have with EQStitch because it was added on to the EQ7 program.  EQStitch can not stand alone and operate.  It must be added to EQ7 to work.  There are also add-on products that can be added to the EQ7 quilt design software.  The big advantage of having an add-on program is that you can use items from the core program in the new add-on program without having to purchase new features.  We can use the blocks and images from EQ7 as the basis of a new stitched design in EQStitch.  This is a great feature for me because I can not draw.  I am really good at tracing something that is all ready there or  editing something that is

EQStitch Sunday Stitch # 4

Posted 08-23-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Sunday Stitch

I have the pleasure of teaching a machine embroidery club every month in my home town.  Each month I come up with digitized designs and a corresponding lesson about the design for the students.  They then take the stitch files and create whatever project they wish with the stitch outs.  Show and tell is awesome and I love seeing what they have created with the designs I provided for them.   There is one thing that makes me cringe when I am watching the students stitch or when they are showing something they have done that was either a free internet design or a purchased design from a website and  they say ‘This design is awful and very poorly digitized!’   But is it always the fault of digitizing or is it some other influencing factor? The digitizing is only the first step to creating an embroidery design.  Hopefully, the

EQStitch Sunday Stitch #3

Posted 08-16-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Sunday Stitch

I have to design lessons for several different classes I am teaching on the use of EQStitch.  I find myself constantly returning to my favorite tool for my samples.  That tool is the Wreath Maker tool.  It is so easy to create repeated patterns of a design.  They do appear in a circle, but I can move the individual elements outside of the circle line if I wish for a new look. 1.  On the stitch worktable , set up the worktable to be an embroidery table. 2.  Click on the ‘drawing board options’ icon on the properties bar. In the drawing board box, set the embroidery edge setting to a bean stitch with a shortened stitch length of 1.5.  The shortened stitch length allows the stitches to easily sew around a curve for a smooth stitched look. Set the embroidery fill setting to be a smooth stitch.  Be sure

EQStitch Sunday Stitch #2

Posted 08-09-2015 by | Posted in: EQStitch Sunday Stitch

The hardest thing I had to do when I first started using computer programs was to find the support I needed as a newbie.  I was surprised how little help there was out there for any of my programs. I had to search out help/lessons by myself.  My sewing store that sold me my first digitizing software told me they were a sewing machine store and not a computer store.  They had to promote and sell the software that went along with their computerized embroidery machines, but they really had no idea how to use it.  So–it was self teaching for me!  I did find a couple instructors in the world that I could attend a class by them, but it was really way over my head as I had never used a computer before, let alone understood anything to do with digitizing!  But, the more I studied the more

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