Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

July 4th is a holiday in the US. The EQ Company will be closed Friday, July 3, 2009. If you’re ordering online, your order will be processed Monday. For tech support, don’t forget to check the Frequently Asked Questions on our website and the forums. Have a great weekend.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! Are your hot dogs ready for the grill? Sparklers waiting to be lit? I think we’re all in the spirit for a little celebration so to kick off your Fourth of July weekend take a peek at Daphne Stewart’s 13 Stars and 13 Stripes quilt, featured in Quiltmaker this month. She designed this quilt in EQ5 and presented it to Quiltmaker back in 2004! Quiltmaker jumped on the chance to show case the quilt and now we finally get to see it in 2009. Here’s what Daphne tells us about designing her quilt: “I remember I started with the idea of a horizontal quilt, sort of like a rectangular flag. I had sewn a small flag with one star and scrappy red stripes in the days before I had EQ and I thought I’d expand on that idea. In that file, I had about 18 versions of the

Quilts hold a story Each block tells a timeless tale Of life’s great journey by: Micki Butler Our guest judge Gyleen X. Fitzgerald has selected 5 winning haiku. Congratulations to: Carolyn Laukkonen Micki Butler Jacquelyn Jacobi Arizona Lagousakos Jodie Witherell Each winner will receive a free Quilting Designs CD of their choice. This was a hard contest to judge because your entries were all SO creative! Who knew you were as poetic as you are artistic?! See the winning entries, along with ALL the other terrific haiku here.   Special thanks to Gyleen X. Fitzgeral for juding the contest and doing the hard part! How did you ever choose, Gyleen!?

Flipping the pages of Irish Quilting Magazine I was stopped by the image of fabulous fabrics by designer Erin McMorris! Her new collection Wildwood is now available through Free Spirit Fabrics. In our May Newsletter we told you about the ClubEQ challenge: designing with virtual swatches of the new Wildwood fabric line by Erin McMorris. And in April’s Newsletter Erin responded to the challenge, picking out quilts for special mention in our first-ever “designer feedback” for ClubEQ. (You can also read our interview with Erin from 2007.)

Julie Pieri of Erie Pennsylvania wrote us a while back to tell us about the quilt she had design in EQ6, Fly by Night. It was to be published in an upcoming issue of Quiltmaker… and while browsing through the July/August issue of Quiltmaker, there I found it! Vibrant and nearly glowing! Julie told us, “I love your software and can’t imagine designing without it!” Thanks Julie! We are so excited to see your work published so beautifully. Congratulations! Julie tells magazine readers a little about how she works with color: “I love working with color combinations and seeing how they play together – like blue and orange against black. I call this “Fly by Night” Because the corner blocks remind me of butterflies and the center looks like their flight path.”

This quilt and Peggy’s story was worth sharing: This all started because I needed a challenge and a bit of discipline in my life. My better half, Jim, was going though some really difficult health issues and I needed focus. So DJ came into the mix. The book that inspired the quilt is by Brenda Manges Papadakis “Dear Jane – The Two Hundred Twenty Five Patterns from 1863 Jane A. Sickle Quilt”. Also EQ has put out the Dear Jane CD and manual, and this makes doing this quilt a possibility of a finished effort. If not for EQ one would have to draw all the blocks and work out the math and she (DJ) would probably just find a corner or shelf and lay there forever unfinished. But with EQ you can create the original size blocks of 5″ to finish at 4 /12″ or make larger blocks. My effort is from my stash and

The results of the EQ Haiku Contest have been decided and will soon be revealed!  But not without a little tease Janice Parks was one of the EQ Haiku contest entries we received. She went above and beyond by sending us a quilt that went along with her haiku and so we wanted to share it with you: Computers EQ Fabric stashes for many quilts Favorite things ~ By Janice Parks We received so many great haiku poems! We are excited to share them all with you. Look in your next EQ Newsletter for the winners!