Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

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

This contest is closed. We’ve contacted the winner – check your email! We are participating in Christa’s book tour for her new book Machine Quilting With Style. Read below to see how Christa designed her quilts with EQ7 and enter to win the program!! We just love the quilts in this book! And yes, they were designed in EQ7!! EQ Artist, Teacher and Author, Christa Watson tells us about herself, her book and how she uses Electric Quilt design software to create such fantastic quilts. I am super excited about my brand new book, Machine Quilting With Style. It includes 12 complete patterns along with step-by-step instructions on how to quilt them on your home sewing machine. I’ve always enjoyed teaching others the entire process of making a quilt from start to finish, and it thrills me to no end when I help someone conquer their fear of machine quilting.

Are you ready for week 3 of Marian Pena’s Row-A-Long? If you haven’t already check out the Flickr group, you can see people’s sewn projects. The Facebook group is pretty active and a great place to chat or ask the designers questions. You can also check out the previous week’s winners on Marian’s site, seamstobesew.com     Here’s who is posting today: Anneka Kornelis at Stof Genoeg Jennifer Ofenstein at Sew Hooked Reeze Hanson at Morning Glory Designs Carol Swift at Just Let Me Quilt Marian Pena at Seams To Be Sew (See the whole schedule here.) Here are the prizes for this week: Northcott Fabrics: 6-8 yards of fabric in 1 yard lengths Fat Quarter Shop: 1 $25.00 gift certificate. Aurifil:  Gleeful by Caroline Hulse 50 wt set of 10 – 225 yd spools Craftsy: 1 class of your choice – 3 total classes Nancy’s Notions: 1 $10.00 of

Export Image Use Export Image if you want to generate high quality images of your blocks and quilts to create professional images for you to use or, that can be used by publishing houses and commercial printers. Click FILE > Export Image, or click on the Export Image  tool on the Project toolbar. An Export Image dialog box will appear for you to name the file and select a format. Navigate to the folder you want to save your image in. In File name, type a name for your image. In Save as type, click the drop-down menu to choose the type of file you’d like to save your image as: bmp, jpg, gif, tiff, or png. Once you’ve selected a filename and format, another dialog will appear for you to make more selections determined by the format you’ve selected. BITMAP, GIF and PNG Dialog All of the dialogs require

Just in time for the holidays – EQ Stash Online is here and full of over 1,000 fabrics for all your seasonal projects! Download Now >> Here’s a sample of fabrics that are included:

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.

It’s the second week for Marian Pena’s EQ Row-A-Long! Today there are five new rows, more tutorials, and lots more prizes! You can see what people are creating in the Flickr group, and for more information you can check out the Facebook group too.       Here’s who is posting today: Amy Heaton at Country Junk’tion – Summer Carol Steely at Fun Threads – Spring Lorna McMahon at Sew Fresh Quilts – Fall Anneka Kornelis at Stof Genoeg – Filler Row Marian Pena at Seams To Be Sew – Winter (See the whole schedule here.) And here are the prizes: Northcott Fabrics: 6-8 yards of fabric in 1 yard lengths Fat Quarter Shop: 1 $25.00 gift certificate. Sulky: 1 six-pack Cotton thread contains 6 spools at 500 yards per spool Connecting Threads: 1 $25.00 gift certificate Sew Fresh Quilts: 3 Fox and Friends Pattern Craftsy: 1 class of your choice