Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

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: Nancy Mahoney! Tell us a bit about yourself Nancy! I have enjoyed making quilts for over 35 years, during which time my beautiful quilts have been featured in over 250 quilt magazines. I have also

This month we’ll be using the Layout Library to design quilts. In this lesson you’ll see how quick it can be to design a twin and queen sized quilt when you start with a pre-designed layout. We’ll also design a king sized quilt and get into a little more detail modifying the layout and adding stencils. Click Libraries > Layout Library Under Layouts by Size click Twin Click 7″ Pieced Vertical Strip Click Edit to Quilt Worktable It will open to the DESIGN tab Click Block Tools > Set Block Click on a block of your choice and click on a patch on the quilt. EQ Default Flying Geese is used in the example. If you’d like a block in every patch, since this is a Vertical Strip layout, hold down the Ctrl/Command key on your keyboard and click in each strip.  Click Layer 2 at the bottom of the

The Electric Quilt Company is 30! 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 starting June 1! Check back each week for a new “pearl!” Plus, each post includes a free project download or giveaway!  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! See all posts so far > How it all began… The Electric Quilt Company started as Dean Neumann, then a math professor at Bowling Green State University, married Penny McMorris, a corporate

It’s time for Block 5 in the BlockBase+ Sew Along! Thanks again to everyone who shared their blocks on Friday. If you haven’t added your block to the link up yet, you can do so at any time in the Block 4 Link Up post. Don’t have the BlockBase+ software yet? It’s not too late to join in! Here on the blog, click Categories > Sew Alongs > BlockBase+ Sew Along 2021 to find all the posts and catch up. Find the BlockBase+ software here > In this post, we’re going to explore the Export options available in BlockBase+. Let’s get started! Double-click the BlockBase+ icon to open the software (close the Getting Started window, if you still see it when you open BB+). By now, I hope you’re all pretty comfortable navigating around the software and finding your blocks. For this lesson, we’ll be working with block 1915b from

Block 4 Link Up time! Let’s show off those 785.7 blocks! Here’s mine: It was a challenge choosing fabrics for this block while sticking with my blue color scheme! I made my block the default 12″ size and used the rotary cutting chart (for cutting my patches) and the foundation pattern (to piece the block). We have hit the halfway point in the sew along! I thought it would be a good time to post some reminders and share a peek at how I’m planning to use the blocks we’ve been making together. Quick reminders for the rest of the sew along: Eight blocks will posted for the sew along. The quilt that I make will use just those eight blocks. I’ll provide a piecing diagram for my quilt, for anyone who would like to use all the default block sizes and the same layout. If you’d like to make

The month of May makes me think of Spring flowers and Mother’s Day.  There are some wonderful applique designs built into EQ8 that host a variety of flower shapes in one applique block.  This one block can look so totally different depending on the fabric choices used.  You can try out different fabrics in your designs to see what gives the best overall feel for the quilt block before you even begin shopping for the fabrics or before you begin cutting the fabrics already in your stash. Launch your EQ8 program and name the project May Flowers. Click on the OK at the bottom of the project helper box. At the top of the screen, click on LIBRARIES>Block Library. In the block libraries box, click on the word ‘search>by notecard’. In the search block notecard box, type in the word ‘mother’ and then click on the ‘search at the bottom of

Welcome to the EQ8 Block Spotlight! Each month we highlight a block from the EQ8 Block Library with a few design ideas. Then we want you to show us what you can do with the block. Whether you’re a brand new EQ8 user or a seasoned pro, come join in the fun! This month’s block: Star Dahlia Where to find it: 02 Contemporary Pieced > Spinning Suns Design ideas to get you started My first quilt uses a layout from the library. This is the first quilt in the Layouts by Style > Special Effects section. I like how I can create fancy layouts using pre-designed options from the library, without the work of building them from scratch on custom set! The quilt below is a vertical strip layout. I alternated Pieced Blocks strips and Half Drop Blocks strips. The majority of the fabrics in the quilt are from the Songbook