Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

EQ7 user Janice Averill has another stunning design in the September/October issue of Quiltmaker! Her beautiful quilt is also the focus of the newest Creative Spark feature on page 39 of the magazine. Rudeneja, pictured above, is made of a single block repeated and rotated to create the intricate design. Changing the color placement in the patches of the individual block results in very different quilts! Make sure you check out the companion EQ7 lesson for the article on Quiltmaker’s site: EQ7 Coloring Tools

The Customize Toolbars Tool If you don’t see the tool you are looking for, try clicking Customize Toolbars and adding the tool. The Customize Toolbars option allows you to modify your toolbars from their default settings. This option is available on all toolbars on the Quilt worktable and the Block worktable. Button Size and Style will affect both worktables and will be remembered when EQ7 is closed. Also, if you choose to Restore Default Tools, you will lose your settings on both worktables. Using the Customize Toolbars Option to Modify the Tools: 1.Click on the Customize Toolbars  button at the end of the toolbar. Or you may right-click with your mouse on any of the tool images on the toolbar. 2. Choose your option from the pop-up menu. • If you’d like a reminder of this and other tools in EQ7, check out the  Display Dynamic Help tool. • To

After a successful EQ Academy this past April, we are excited to announce TWO locations for 2016! View all the classes > Read the recap and reviews from the 2015 event. Perrysburg, OH – April 21-23, 2016 The Perrysburg, Ohio location will offer 3 EQ7 classes and 1 EQStitch class. Mary Ellen Kranz and Christa Watson will be teaching beginner EQ7 classes, Barb Vlack will teach a “confident” beginner class and Yvonne Menear will be teaching an EQStitch class. Classes run for three days from 9:00am-4:00pm with an hour lunch break. Friday evening will be a lecture series from all the teachers…an EQ Academy favorite! Enrollment opens August 18, 2015. Denver, CO – September 8-10, 2016 The Denver location (Greenwood Village, CO) is a new EQ Academy location! We are excited to be able to offer this off-site workshop. There will be 2 EQ7 classes and 1 EQStitch class, plus

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

We love coming across EQ users in quilting magazines… and we also love seeing EQ Artists in quilting magazines! Recently, we spotted three EQ Artists: When I asked Bea Lee if her “Stars at Night” quilt was designed in EQ7, she replied: “Of course it was!!” She also told me she had originally named it “Ghostbusters” and had gone through several renditions of the quilt before deciding on the final design shown in the August/September 2015 issue of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine. Here are images of her process in EQ7:       When I asked Nancy Mahoney if she used EQ7 to design her featured quilt, she replied, “I use EQ7 to design all my quilts!” If you’ve seen Nancy Mahoney’s “Boxing Match” quilt in the September/October ’15 issue of Quiltmaker magazine, you’d remember it looking like this: What you probably didn’t know is that Nancy’s original EQ7 design was

In the Summer issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited there is an article by me! In the article I discuss different ways to use log cabin blocks in quilts. It includes flipping and rotating, editing blocks, drawing simple blocks, using the Layout Library and much more!                 There is also a web extra which includes step-by-step instructions on how to make these two quilts!     And, you can download the EQ7 project that includes all the quilts featured in the magazine! 14 Quilts total! Don’t miss it!         

The Shape Tool The Shape tool allows you to edit and change the shape of patches by moving nodes to reshape the patch, as well as adding nodes to line segments. To Change the Shape of the Patch: 1. Position the mouse over a node. 2. Click on the node with your left mouse button, hold and drag it to a new location.       Double-click on a segment to add a note.    Click, hold and drag the node to a new location. The Pieced layer of the PatchDraw worktable is permanently set to Snap to Grid. When you are moving nodes on the worktable, you will notice the node snapping to the closest grid point. Be sure that your patches don’t overlap one another. You may find it just as easy to redraw a block than to edit an existing block. To Add and Delete Nodes: 1. Position the mouse