Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

At the beginning of this month we revealed the Mystery Quilt we started with the Kaleidoscope Collection. Instead of just sewing blocks, we actually used all the triangles in an interlocking larger kaleidoscope pattern. It was a lot of sewing, but sooo worth it. Here is my quilt top: Made by Andrea Bishop We want pictures! We’ll do the “befores” and then in a few months after the border lessons, we’ll do the “afters”. The quilt top below is made by Judy Best. She says: “I spent the weekend sewing up a storm and have my “wedges” done for the mystery quilt, I’ve attached a picture of the wedges laid out on the floor. You suggested using fun fabric so I did, starting with a pink, white and black stripe fabric that caught my eye and added to it a check, small stripe, pink print, tone on tone purple, dark

Write an EQ-Haiku – you may win a prize. We’ll choose our favorite 5 haiku. Each of the 5 winners will receive a free Quilting Designs CD of their choice. And we’ll print all the haiku in our next newsletter. What is a haiku? It’s an unrhymed verse most commonly with three short lines: Line 1 – 5 syllables Line 2 – 7 syllables Line 3 – 5 syllables The challenge of Haiku is to convey meaning and imagery in such a short form. Possible subjects of EQ-Haiku: quilts, EQ, software, computers, sewing. A sample EQ-Haiku from EQ the Mouse: Penny’s desk my home Her monitor my window EQ quilts await Enter as many EQ-Haiku as you’d like. Send your EQ-Haiku to: penny@electricquilt.com. Entry deadline: June 19th. So do it now!

If only we could all have been this organized at 16. Let me introduce you to Ashley Malinowski. We first met Ashley at Pittsburgh Quilt Market when she stopped by our booth. She totally charmed us all with her personality and initiative. I think her first words to us were something like “I love EQ”, so that might have had something to do with it too. When we asked Ashley how she used Electric Quilt, she said it enabled her to start her own pattern line. This 16-year-old go-getter already works at a quilt shop and got an excused absence form to skip a few days of school to go promote her pattern line. Now that school’s out for the summer, I asked Ashley to tell us a little more about her story: “I am Ashley Malinowski, a 16 year old, junior in High School, using EQ6. I think the

Browsing through the August ’09 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting we came across instructions for a quilt called Tile Style by Cheryl Malkowski. The quilt caught our eye so we got in touch with Cheryl to learn more about her design. Turns out, she had designed it in EQ6! Cheryl writes: “Yes, I used EQ6, as always! I’d seen the tiles downstairs in the auditorium at Sisters Middle School and ran upstairs to our classroom/dorm room to draw it out in EQ a few years ago during Quilters Affair week in Sisters. The tiles on the floor were just ¼ of that block, so they were in effect, a 16 patch, but I was intrigued by the way the little ‘chain’ ran through it, and wondered what would happen if I put 4 of them together. Once I put them together, I took out the unnecessary seams and there was the

THE OBSERVATION Jean Biddick wrote us this week with an observation about soaking her printable fabric sheets. She writes: “This week I’ve been working on a major project and had several sheets to rinse. They came out great. Then I trimmed one of the images without adding a seam allowance and had to print that sheet over again. This time the edges (ink) ran. And this time, because I had just done several other sheets with good results, I was able to figure out what I had done differently. The good ones were done in a large glass baking pan. The bad one was done in the kitchen sink – a stainless steel sink. My guess is that something in the metal sink is reacting with the chemicals in the ink.” WHAT WE LEARNED This got our wheels turning. Why would the stainless steel cause the ink to bleed? After

Have you checked out the EQ Quilt Gallery lately? We’ve recently added some beautiful new quilts submitted by EQers that are worth checking out! Like this one by Anne Maundrell titled, Fan Palms: EQ Quilt Design Finished quilt in fabric Submit your EQ designs that have made it into fabric and we’ll post them in the Quilt Gallery! • What we need sent to penny@electricquilt.com: EQ project (tell us which quilt it is in the Sketchbook) • Photo of the finished quilt (as square and straight-on as possible, around 600 pixels or larger) • Quilt Title • Who gets the Credit? (designer, maker, quilter) • Note or Story about the quilt • Your website or blog information (optional)

Back in April we announced a contest in celebration of the 20th Edition of Stash! Well, we have our winner… Congratulations and THANK YOU to Judy Best for having collected every single STASH CD over the past several years! We contacted Judy to tell her that her free STASH Spring ’09 was in the mail and she replied with a very sweet message and “confession” of sorts: “It’s now official, I’m addicted to EQ and all of it’s related products. I’m sure there are many others as well, they were just afraid to admit it. I can remember when I first started looking for a quilting program, I researched all that were available and finally decided on EQ (the first version) and I believe I made the right decision. The program has continued to grow and improve and I often wonder how I made quilts before EQ, you know the days