Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

One of my favorite tricks in PatchDraw for sizing a design is using the CTRL key. 1. Go get any appliqué block from the library. 2. Edit it out of the Sketchbook to the worktable. 3. On the Applique tab, press CTRL+A to select all. (You need something selected for this to work.) 4. Hold down the CTRL key as you move a corner handle in or out. Watch the selected patches as you do this. : )

A while back Penny helped a EQ user, Terry Lines, with some tech support questions over the phone. Well, Penny must have done something very right because Terry sent a sweet thank you card the other day! She also sent us this piece of fabric that we just had to laugh at. It reminded her of what our office might look like Too perfect! Truthfully, that does sort of look like me there in the bottom right hand corner ~Sarah

Fran Iverson Gonzalez, author of EQ6 Simplified, will be teaching an online series of classes. You can find one right for you whether you’re a beginner, an intermediate, or an advanced EQer. The classes are offered vis www.quiltuniversity.com, and sign ups are going on now. http://www.quiltuniversity.com/classlist2.htm#EQ6Sampler http://www.quiltuniversity.com/classlist2.htm#EQ6BuildingBlocks http://www.quiltuniversity.com/classlist2.htm#EQ6AdvancedLayouts

Tradition around the EQ office is that when you leave for an extended vacation (honeymoon or maternity, the two most happening things around here) something happens to your stuff! We like to surprise the “returnee” with something on their first day back. In the past we’ve filled a cubical with balloons, covered a desk with sticky notes, put staplers into jello and many more. But we might have topped ourselves when Sara Woodward returned from maternity leave today! We wrapped her whole desk and all the little details with newspaper! It was priceless. Of course its all in good fun so Sara got a kick out of it… but she was still cleaning it up well into the afternoon. Hey, it’s the price you pay.

7) How do I make a skewed hexagon that is the length of two hexagons. Go to WORKTABLE > Work on Block. BLOCK > New Block > PatchDraw Motif. Make sure VIEW > Precision Bar has a check next to it. Click the Pick tool. Set your block size, snaps, & graph paper. Make sure Snapping Options 1, 2, 3, and 5 are turned on. Click the Polygon flyout and choose the hexagon. Point anywhere in the block outline. Hold the CTRL key as you click, hold and drag diagonally down. Release when you have a perfectly vertical hexagon (that is a little smaller than half the block). Click the Center button on the Precision Bar. Click the left arrow next to “y” until it is zero. Don’t touch x. *If you are going to combine the small one with the long hexagon, I recommend clicking Add to Sketchbook right

We wanted to share another Digital Essentials review this time from Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine: Digital Essentials – The quilt makers must-have guide to images, files, and more! …After definitions, Gloria explains how to enlarge, straighten, adjust the color or even change or eliminate the background of your digital quilt photos. She gives explicit instructions for working with each software program, and illustrations include computer screen shots and drop down menus as she walks you through each task in a direct, step-by-step, fashion. Side by side photos showing the results of adjusting such settings as saturation, sharpen and brightness are found throughout the book.ce. Whether you want to use your images to simply print, print on fabric, combine images, prepare a Power Point presentation, upload you quilt photos to a website or create image sizes which conform to the requirements for quilt show entries, Digital Essentials has the answer. There

Download this pretty quilt project for your EQ6 compliments of Carol Clasper’s blog. Here’s the post where she’s made the download available.