Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

It’s a festive time of year, maybe you are feeling inspired by pretty candle-lit stained glass windows and imagining how to design them as quilts? Did you know there are 88 stained glass blocks already in EQ8? On the home screen click Design a Quilt from Scratch Click NEW QUILT >  Horizontal Click the LAYOUT tab Under NUMBER OF BLOCKS enter… Horizontal: 4 Vertical: 4 Under FINISHED SIZE OF BLOCKS enter… Width: 12 Height: 12 Under FINISHED SIZE OF SASHING enter… Width: .5 Height: .5 Click the DESIGN tab Click Block Tools Click Open Library Click the plus sign + next to 03 Foundation Pieced and scroll down to Stained Glass Grids Click Select all Blocks Click Add to Sketchbook Click Close Click Set Block and click to place whichever blocks you would like in the quilt. Click the Fabric Tools Click Swap Color Click on the black swatch and click on any

December’s Fabric of the Month is Best of Morris by Barbara Brackman for Moda! These William Morris reproductions are full of exquisite detail and beautiful patterns reminiscence of nature.  A bundle of Best of Morris fabrics will be given away to one lucky winner! Submit your EQ design featuring Best of Morris below… all instructions and contest details are in this post. Good luck! To enter Design your own, original quilt in EQ using the Best of Morris fabrics then submit an image of it by 11:59pm ET on December 31, 2021. (Instructions for how to submit an image are at the bottom of this post.) Download the free Best of Morris fabrics for EQ here. Rules Your EQ Quilt must only use fabrics from the Best of Morris collection. One entry per person. (If a second entry is submitted within 24 hours of the original entry, we will accept the more recent entry. For example, if you submit an incomplete quilt, or the wrong

The Electric Quilt Company is 30! The Electric Quilt Company’s Story – How It All Began We’re celebrating 30 years! Since the pearl is the traditional symbol for 30 years, we’re sharing EQ Pearls of Wisdom from our friends! See all Pearls of Wisdom posts. We hope you enjoy the tips and tricks you learn along the way and discover some new quilters or catch up with your favorites! Also, we’d love to hear about YOUR journey with EQ so feel free to tell us your story in the comments on any post! A big THANK YOU to all our customers for your support over the years. We’re looking forward to many more!  This week’s featured friend: Wendy Sheppard! A bit about Wendy! Wendy Sheppard is originally from southeast Asia. She came to the United States for her tertiary education. With degrees in Chemical Engineering and years later, she now lives with

Hello Electric Quilters!  I have been intrigued by English paper piecing and all things hexagon.  I have done many traditional square blocks but I had not experimented with drawing or designing with hexagons.  I had taken a class in design many years ago but had not really used the skills in a while.  I dove right in and fell in love with the design process.  In this lesson, we will learn a way to draw a hexagon and draw pieced hexagons using some simple shapes. Pieced Hexagons Skillset: Advanced Beginner Skill Builders: Create a guide for block drawing Draw a hexagon using polydraw   Lets talk about the hexagon shape first.   The hexagon shape is a six sided shape whose overall dimensions are not square. The hexagon above is oriented horizontally with the flat sides on the top and bottom. Hexagons are measured by their side length.  For this example we

The Electric Quilt Company is 30! The Electric Quilt Company’s Story – How It All Began We’re celebrating 30 years! Since the pearl is the traditional symbol for 30 years, we’re sharing EQ Pearls of Wisdom from our friends! See all Pearls of Wisdom posts. We hope you enjoy the tips and tricks you learn along the way and discover some new quilters or catch up with your favorites! Also, we’d love to hear about YOUR journey with EQ so feel free to tell us your story in the comments on any post! A big THANK YOU to all our customers for your support over the years. We’re looking forward to many more!  This week’s featured friend: Reeze Hanson! Tell us a bit about yourself Reeze! My name is Reeze Hanson of Morning Glory Designs from Ottawa, KS. I am a quilter, designer, and teacher for the past 15 years. Before that

My experience with teaching quilting and machine embroidery over the years is that the simplest projects are liked the best by the students.  When I present a challenging lesson or a lesson with lots of steps to create amazing designs, I often don’t get people excited about the whole process.  When I give them something incredibly simple and quick to create, they O0h and Ahh over it for months afterward. I like to be challenged to learn more, do better, get more creative, and try things I would normally never do.  I don’t care to repeat the same process more than once because I get easily bored.  The more I have to work to get the results I want, the more I am learning during the process.  That does not mean that I can’t appreciate quick and easy projects. Open your EQ8 and name a new project called ‘Precuts and

Do you plan to gift some quilts to family and friends this holiday season? Don’t forget to put a label on the quilt before you wrap it up! It’s important to document your quilts for future generations. And you worked hard on that quilt! You should “sign” your work, just like any other artist. Did you know you can design your own personalized labels in EQ8? Print the labels on EQ Printables Inkjet Fabric Sheets and you’ll have the perfect label for quilt. Create Your Own Quilt Label in EQ8 Below is a simple option that won’t use much ink, but still has a holiday flair! Download the free Lightbulb Border project from DoYouEQ.com. If you are given the option to open or save, choose to save the project. Most browsers will save the project file to the Downloads folder. Open the project file (Lightbulbs.PJ8) in EQ8. View the Project