Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

Welcome to the EQ8 Block Spotlight series! Each month we highlight a block from the EQ8 Block Library with a few design ideas. Then we want you to show us what you can do with the block. This month is a little different—you have three blocks to choose from! Pick from one of the snowflake blocks below (or use them all!). This month’s block: Snowflake 1, 2, or 3! Where to find them: 05 Contemporary Applique > Season-Winter Design ideas to get you started I used all three applique blocks in the border of my first design. Because the border has such complex blocks, I kept the center blocks simple to piece and used two blocks from the 01 Classic Pieced > Diamond in a Square section of the library. For my second quilt, I used the Stars-19 layout from the Layouts by Style > Stars section of the Layout

Last month we announced the exciting news that we’ve teamed up with the Quilts of Valor Foundation® (QOVF) for a special 8-month collaboration! We’re requesting both an image of your EQ-software-QOV design and a photo of the accompanying finished Quilt of Valor®. Scroll down below to read more details about this amazing event! Sharon Wasteney Soon after reaching out to Sharon Wasteney, of Something Stitched, she replied with a resounding “Count me in” to be part of this wonderful event! Following are 3 of Sharon’s Quilts of Valor. Sharon’s “Remembered” quilt was published in the July/August issue of Love of Quilting magazine. The 10 stars across the top of the quilt represent and commemorate the ten members of Sharon’s family who have served our country, both past and present. The block was identified as the Alamo block, designed by a Texas woman in the 1800s. Sharon used EQ8 to reproduce the block and then arrange

Welcome to our blog series, Do You EQ Too? Each month, we will spotlight a different EQ user and their quilts! If you haven’t already, you can read our introduction post here. This month we are spotlighting Caroline Hadley! We came across Caroline on Instagram, where she shares her weekly “Sunday sketches” series. Each week she shares a new quilt design, as well as the variations she discovered along the way, to her blog and discusses the design process. Every quilt is beautifully dynamic and modern, and we look forward to seeing what ideas she comes up with each week! Read more about Caroline’s design journey below: “I’ve been using Electric Quilt 8 since 2018,” says Caroline. “I used to design on a dot pad or graph paper, but playing with block rotation or placement was very time-consuming – I’d have to redraw the whole design each time I wanted to make a minor

Thank you to everyone who participated in November’s design challenge! We say it often, but we love to see how you each take the same fabrics and create so many different designs! Winners Two winners were selected randomly. Congratulations to…. Winner 1: Beth M “My husband is a veteran, serving in both the USMC and Army between 1975 and 1984. I was especially touched when he saw me working on this quilt and commented on it. I was staring at it, thinking it needed something ‘tweaked’ when he walked over and said ‘wow, that’s awesome, you should make that’. I figured if he liked it enough to comment then it must be done.” - Beth M Winner 2: Brittany Fisher “Went for a patriotic burst this round!” - Brittany Fisher Thanks again to all who participated in this challenge. If you’re looking for another chance to win the Stars and Stripes fabric, check out EQ’s collaboration

Can you believe it’s already December?! As the year comes to an end, December’s Fabric of the Month is Forest Chatter by Maywood Studio! This stunning collection was created with care specially by the Maywood Studio team: “Every image and shape used in Forest Chatter was drawn, carved, and printed by hand. A forest filled with activity emerged as we filled the wall in our design studio with prints We collaborated as a team to sketch, stamp, and get our hands dirty. Our creativity came together to bring you Forest Chatter, the newest Workshop collection.” A bundle of these fabrics will be given away to one lucky winner! Submit your EQ design featuring Forest Chatter below…all instructions and contest details are in this post. Good luck! To enter In order to enter for the giveaway you must submit a quilt using the current Fabric of the Month AND comment on at least one other person’s quilt you like by

This month we’re playing with different ways to make wreaths in EQ8! EQ8 comes with some wreath blocks already installed. Let’s check those out first. Open EQ8 and click Search for block patterns Click Search > By Notecard Type in wreath Check all 3 boxes. Make sure it reads Find at most 300 items. Click Search Click on a wreath you like and click Edit to Block Worktable This is a Polydraw + Applique block, with everything drawn on the Applique tab. If you want to edit here is a lesson about applique blocks. Otherwise, click the COLOR tab and recolor the block, if you’d like. (We’ll be changing the block and recoloring it again in a few steps, if you want to wait.) But, even a spring wreath can look more wintery with some new colors or fabric! One option is to use fabrics from the Fabric Library > Themes

My favorite colors are Blue, Purple, and Fuschia.  Most of my fabric stash is in these colors.  When I design a quilt or block in EQ8 I often start with grayscale colors and add my favorite colors later.  I prefer to have all my favorite colors in one project that I can return to with future projects and import the fabric library I created with my favorite colors. Open your EQ8 program and create a new project named ‘My Favorite Colors’. I start making my favorite color project by removing all the blocks and fabrics in the EQ program by default.  This way I can create a clean sketchbook with only the blocks and fabric colors I like. In the sketchbook under the blocks heading, click on the three little dots on the upper right side.  Click on the option to ‘clear all unused blocks.   In the pop-up box, click