Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

Last month Sherry Herringshaw wrote in about an opportunity quilt she did with her guild (designed in EQ of course). That was one cool medallion. It must be a popular use, because Jan Steinhoff wrote to say she did the same. Here is Jan’s original EQ design: Jan says: This is the quilt that Amador Valley Quilters will market in order to raise money for the guild. We use it primarily to buy materials to make and give away over 500 quilts a year to local shelters We sell tickets to other guilds and at local quilt shows, such as Pacific International Quilt Festival in Menlo Park. The appliqué on the borders is based on patterns from Gwen Marston and Pat Campbell (who also gave permission to me to use them). Here is the finished quilt: Hopefully this opportunity quilt gave you just that – the opportunity to do a

I hope you all have had a chance to play with the star layouts in the EQ5 or EQ6 library. Beth Davis did… and wow. You should see the spectacular “Star Burst” quilt she came up with. Here’s what Beth says: “I thought you might enjoy seeing a quilt that I just completed. It is called “Star Burst” and is 102″ X 102″. I designed it using EQ5. I used one of the existing quilt layouts from the library. I used a pineapple block with commercial fabric for the 8 pointed star and radiating star points. I tried different pieced blocks for the plain block areas but nothing was working.” Beth’s “Star Burst” quilt “Last summer I took a Shibori class with Marjie McWilliams at Quiltuniversity.com. When I auditioned the star burst hand dyed fabric in those plain blocks, I thought the quilt came to life. I was able to

A while back I showed you some projects Margaret was making incorporating the printable fabric photos of leaves. Well I promised I’d show you the finished pieces and she’s finally done! Below are a few photos of the finished quilt. Circling the center diamond, there are four photos of leaves and greenery. By themselves they are just four diagonal blocks made from photos but Margaret has done something really cool to really make them apart of the quilt. Take a look at the finished quilt from far away Now zoomed in on the center photos. Now REALLY close, you can see what Margaret has done. You can see that the photo of the leaf is inside the tiled rectangle but then you can see that the photo of the leaf somehow extends out from the photo as if it’s growing into the quilt! Using each photo as a starting point,

Maureen from New York shared a very special printable fabrics project with us. Her niece was getting married and Maureen made her a VERY special purse to carry on her big day. The purse was made of material from her mother’s wedding dress, material from her mother’s veil, and photos of the dress receipt, wedding photo, and newspaper announcement on EQ printable fabric. The purse turned out beautifully and is such a unique and sentimental gift. “I love your fabric sheets. This is the first time I used them. I was making a purse for my niece, who is getting married, I used the velvet from my mother’s wedding dress and the Madeira lace from her veil. I had her wedding picture, the bill for the wedding dress and the announcement from the newspaper. printed all of these on the fabric and used it as the lining for the purse….

If you’ve ever used Wreathmaker and wanted to do more… here’s a technique I’ve used a lot to redraw the Quiltmaker blocks for the Quilting Designs series. Pages 244-245 in the EQ6 User Manual describe the Ellipse tool a little bit. Add the Ellipse tool to your PatchDraw Appliqué toolbar. Drag out a big ellipse. Ensure its a perfect circle by typing in the size in the Precision Bar. Make the size the same size as your block. Change the ellipse style to “partition evenly into sections.” Set the number of times you want the design to be in the circle. Center the ellipse using the Precision bar button. If you don’t want it perfectly up and down you can rotate it some number of degrees (like 5 or 18.2… whatever you want). Make a second smaller perfect circle and center it. Your block should look something like this now:

I love to play in EQ6. I wanted to share yet another use for “BLOCK > Serendipity > Merge Blocks”. If you start a new block in EasyDraw and draw this: Then you can merge it with any other block in your Sketchbook to create a “Shadowed Block”. Set the new block in a Horizontal quilt with sashing, color it, and you’ll get this: Happy EQ-ing!

In the previous post, I showed you a Mariner’s Compass quilt by Bobbinhead who I now know is Bethany. Bethany sent me a link to another blog she more frequently posts to and where you can see the finished Mariner’s Compass quilt top. But… she still hasn’t tackled the circle in the middle! She’s getting there She’s trying some things to decrease the focus from the large circle center. Bethany, it looks stunning! Great job and let us know how you end up finishing your center!