Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

Barb’s newest challenge is: “Create a label for a quilt. You may use the Appliqué Text tool to write a generic greeting or description on the label.” It’s been 5 years since we had a labels challenge, and it was pretty popular then. Don’t forget to create your quilt label and submit it to penny@electricquilt.com before the July deadline. All participants will receive a secret link where they can download all the quilt label projects from the other participants at the end of the month.

Brenda Miller is a quilter and artist Penny met on her way home from Spring Market in Portland, OR. Lucky for us, Brenda recognized Penny’s voice from the help videos in the EQ program! Over the years, Brenda has sorted through her many creative talents over and over again but has always found her way back to quilting. Now, Brenda quilts the days away making quilts and shoulder bags that are just adorable! Fortunately, she does a fantastic job of documenting her projects on her website. Brenda often uses EQ5 for her many designs and my favorite is this Pears Helene Set that includes a table runner, place mats, and wall hanging for the kitchen. The stylish arrangement of pears and branches was originally drawn by Brenda by hand but then taken into EQ5 for refinement. Here also, are some examples of the cute shoulder bags she designs. You can

This is just too cute… Ann Smith is the very proud grandmother of 5 year old Addie Smith. Ann has passed on her passion for quilting to Addie and the two often spend a good portion of their day quilting and designing with EQ6. EQ6 has even become a bit of a learning tool for Addie’s home-schooled art lessons. Her grandmother teaches her the basics of color matching and contrasting of which Addie is now quite the pro! In fact, designing quilts in EQ6 is one of Addie’s favorite things to do. “She is 5 and she absolutely loves EQ6. We home school and if she is dawdling around I tell her that we won’t be able to do EQ6… she picks up the pace instantly.” We just thought this was a great story and we’re happy to hear we’ve got quilters of all ages. Thanks for sharing Ann and

Here’s a fun way to draw a perfect half-circle as a PatchDraw Motif. WORKTABLE > Work on Block. BLOCK > New Block > PatchDraw Motif. (If your worktable isn’t square, go to BLOCK > Drawing Board Setup and change the Block size to be 5×5 and snaps to be 5×5.) Right-click the Appliqué toolbar and left-click Add/Remove buttons. Make sure the Ellipse tool has a check next to it. Click away from the list to close it. Click on the Ellipse tool on the toolbar. Make sure your Precision Bar is turned on (VIEW > Precision Bar needs to have a check next to it). Drag out a circle in the middle of the workspace… doesn’t matter what size. In the Precision Bar, for the first set of numbers click the left-facing arrow until both read 0.000. For the second set of numbers set them to be the size of

How cool is this? Apparently Tricia Sherman from QnnTV.com also does video spots on her own website about “The Great Canadian Shop Hop.” It’s a virtual shop hop from store to store. Jean Boyd uses our EQ Printables in her samples, classes and demos. Check out the little presentation Jean did with the EQ fabric sheets when the Great Canadian Shop Hop came to visit her local store, The Country Quilter. 1) Go to The Great Canadian Shop Hop website. 2) In the right section, click on the words “Video Player”. 3) Scroll down in the list until you find “Show #7 (The Country Quilter)”. 4) Click on the picture of the video camera where it says “Play”. What a neat idea! If you’d like to see more of how Jean uses printed photos on fabric, visit her website: Patterns by Jean Boyd

Here’s a little something for the 3-day weekend. I was talking with our part-time EQ employee/part-time quilt shop owner, Margaret, about her recent Block of the Month. She said she did it all in 5-Grid blocks. I asked her how she came up with so many cool designs and she said something so obvious I felt silly for not thinking of it sooner. A 5-Grid block is just four 4-Patches with a sash. Likewise, a 7-Grid block is just four 9-Patches with a sash. So, here’s the EQ6 trick… There are a few ways the background block can be drawn: Let’s say you want to merge the Hour Glass block with your background 5-Grid with the center sash. Just use BLOCK > Serendipity > Merge Blocks to add the new block to the Sketchbook. Edit the new block from the Sketchbook and copy and paste the corner around to the

Our Quilt Market attendees, Penny, Dean, Ann & Andrea, are all back from Portland, Oregon. Thanks to all the quilt shop owners & employees who stopped by our booth with questions or just to say “Hi” and those who attended Penny & Andrea’s schoolhouse presentations. We hope to see you all in Houston too!