Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

Sheryl recently wrote us about a baby quilt she made for her niece Cherish who is pregnant with a little girl of her own. Here at EQ we are no strangers to pregnant women and babies so we couldn’t resist sharing this adorable EQ designed baby quilt. “I scanned my fabrics and imported them to use in the pattern. I also fussy scanned/cropped the focus fabric (Vintage Kids or what I call Dick & Jane) and imported those pictures to use as blocks. It turned out very nicely thanks to EQ6! “ Here’s a link to Sheryl’s blog where you can read more.     Sheryl also uses her EQ to create pattern illustrations in Word: “I use EQ for the illustrations in my patterns by exporting to PSP vX and then inserting into Word documents. I love the way I can use the 2 programs together!” Click here to

I was playing in EQ6 today and found a neat trick. Get the star layout from the Layout library and CTRL+click in a Crazy Patch block. CTRL+click with the Rotate tool and watch how the star spins. Isn’t that cool? Here’s the lesson: CTRL+click and the Layout Library (When it comes to the library, go into library #3 into the Crazy blocks: EQ6 Users click Add to Sketchbook, EQ5 Users click Copy). Example by Andrea If you find a cool one, send me a picture of your design and I’ll post it here (first 20 people only). #1 by Joan Mathews #2 by Andrea Bishop #3 by Judy Messenger #4 by Ingrid Eichstedlund #5 by Estelle Langslow #6 by Cynthia Green #7 by Marion Nickey #8 by Svanhild Schmidt-Hovstad #9 by Janice Averill

Here’s a cool trick for keeping a patch (or patches) on the diagonal. This is all done on the appliqué tab of a PatchDraw Block or PatchDraw Motif in EQ6. 1. Draw a patch. 2. Center it. 3. Depending on which way you want it to go, click one of the top pair of arrows and one of the bottom pair of arrows for Position each time you want it to move. In the example linked here, I want the leaf to move up and right, so I click the Up and Right buttons once each. The arrows work in increments,… so there’s no math involved! -Andrea : )

Judy Butcher shared with us a really neat EQ project she made on appliqué calligraphy. Here’s a little more about it from her blog: “Before I got a computer with lots of fancy fonts I dabbled in Calligraphy. I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I have always loved the look of a page of beautiful writing. With a computer I put the fountain pens and assorted nibs and bottles of ink aside, and used a publishing program to produce fancy text on a page. However, I still play with fancy letters, but now I am appliquéing letters onto quilts rather than putting beautiful writing on paper. This ’sampler’ is one of a series of smaller wall hangings I have designed, a couple of which I have made, experimenting with different fonts, and ‘page’ layouts. A couple of the fonts I have designed myself, and the ones on the computer have

Let’s get some chatter on here. Tell me what was your favorite get-together at your local quilt shop (or even with your local quilt guild)? What did the shop owners, guild leaders, or teachers do that made it so special? -Andrea p.s. My favorite was the “ugly fabric challenge” I saw at one quilt guild. I guess what doesn’t inspire one person, may inspire another. The quilts they came up with were amazing… crazy color schemes, but amazing. : ) I liked the way people reacted to seeing their fabric used so beautifully in other people’s quilts.

We are so excited to finally be unveiling the newly designed Electric Quilt website! EQ Webmaster Andrea Bishop and EQ Designer Sara Seuberling worked together to complete the project. The goal was to make the site more organized for our users and for those of you who are unfamiliar with EQ. Go take a look around! We hope you enjoy the new site as much as we do.

A long time EQ user, Linda Erickson, was chosen as the Featured Quilter on the new Arizona Quilters website – a website that promotes quilting in Arizona. She has an interesting story as to how she got started quilting and credits many friends and tools along the way. We wanted to share a bit of her featured spot and her beautiful quilt gallery with all of you: “Being a very pragmatic individual, I taught myself to piece and quilt using a self-instruction book purchased at WalMart.  After trying hand piecing and hand quilting, I deciding that machine work was just the thing for me. I joined the New Mexico Quilters’ Association and was inspired by its speakers and instructors to try bigger and better things and was surprised to start winning ribbons at the annual NM State Fair and NMQA shows.  I became heavily involved with the Albuquerque Biennial Fiber Arts