Behind the Mouse: The Electric Quilt Blog

Scroll down to see the photo gallery! Another great weekend of fun and learning at EQ Academy 2017! We saw many familiar faces and met lots of new EQ users too. It’s so fun meeting the people who use our products and putting faces to names that call our Tech Support number! We are always floored to see what our students learn to do in the 3 days they are here. Our EQ Teachers are awesome! The EQ Staff always enjoys EQ Academy, but what matters more is what our students think. Here are a couple of quotes from this year’s students: “Thank you to the EQ staff for all you did! A special thank you to Mary Ellen Kranz for an amazing 3 days of fun and learning! She has so much knowledge and patience, I would enjoy taking all my classes from her. And a thank you to

Happy Easter everyone!  Safe travels to each of you who are attending the EQAcademy in Ohio this week.  Enjoy your time as you learn the EQ program and get to meet the EQ staff while you are there. I am not a big chocolate eater, but I do like jelly beans.  Let’s draw a woven basket and some heaps of jelly beans for our special treat this week. Open your EQStitch program. Click on the stitch worktable icon and select the embroidery worktable from the stitching menu. Set your drawing board options to be a smooth fill and no outline for the embroidery settings. Be sure to click the OK at the bottom of the box to set the new options. Use the last polygon shape from the fly out selection of  polygon shapes  to draw a basket bottom. Select the ellipse tool and click and drag an oval for

EQ Mini may be a smaller version of EQ7, but it still comes jam packed with all kinds of blocks, 300 to be exact.  I thought you might like to see what blocks come with the program.  There are so many, this block party will just share the first category of Classic Pieced Blocks. To follow along with me, Open up EQ Mini. Go to Libraries, Block Libraries. If you are considering buying EQ Mini, just come along for the ride as I share the block designs. When you go into the Block Libraries, you will see a long list of different categories of blocks.  This block party will share just the blocks in the first category, 01 Classic Pieced. There are 11 subcategories under the 01 Classic Pieced blocks.  The first one is Antique Mosaics which is displayed above.  Each subcategory has 9 to 12 blocks.  Lets see what creative

While at QuiltCon in February, we couldn’t help but spend our precious free time wandering through the quilt gallery and admiring all the creative designs! Dawn Golstab was one of several designers who mentioned their use of EQ7 in their quilt description so we reached out to her! If you haven’t already seen her award-winning quilt, scroll down to check it out along with several other quilts she’s designed in EQ. EQ: Hi Dawn! Tell us a bit about yourself. Dawn: I think I have always had a sewing machine in my life.  When I learned to sew, it was all about new outfits!  As I got older my sewing expanded to include home décor, mostly curtains & throw pillows and then pretty dresses for my daughter.  There were periods, of course, where life gets in the way and the sewing machine was neglected, but never abandoned!  About 5 years

The formula below works for diamond borders as well as strips in strip quilts. Click QUILT > New Quilt > Vertical Strip (or Horizontal strip). Click the Layout tab, then click the Add or Delete button until you have the number of strips you want. Under Select strip style: select from the following: Diamonds or Half Drop Diamonds. Under Number of blocks along length: choose the number of diamonds you want along the strip. Under Strip size:follow the formula below to arrive at the width.Divide strip length by number of blocks along length. Divide this result by 1.7320508. (This is the square root of 3). This gives you the strip width. Multiply by 2 to account for the extra diamond across the strip width (for Double Diamonds and Half Drop Diamonds borders only). For example: Strip length: 70” Number of blocks along length: 10 70” divided by 10 = 7

Click WORKTABLE > Work on Quilt. Click QUILT > New Quilt > choose Horizontal or On-point. Click the Layout tab. Under Number of blocks, make Horizontal 1 and Vertical 1. Under Finished size of blocks, make the block size you want. Under Finished size of sashing, you can create a small border around the medallion by choosing a sashing size other than 0.00. For Horizontal Layouts, you must also click the check “Include sash border.” Click the Borders tab. You can now create as many borders, in whatever style you would like, to create multiple borders surrounding your central medallion. Click the Layer 1 tab. You can now set blocks, including into the sashing. Note: If you want a center square larger than 48″, click QUILT > Options > click “All Styles” under “Layout Options” > increase the block size allowed. If you want to use square blocks in your

April’s Club EQ THE CHALLENGE: Barb Vlack says,“The annual contest theme at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah this year is Flying Geese. Let’s see what we can do with Flying Geese that takes our quilts away from being predictable and ordinary. If you play with the concept (even if you have no desire to make the quilt you design), you may be approaching my favorite pastime – playing with EQ7 as a video game. It’s really fun to try new ideas and look for more inspiration! My two examples have a lot of white negative space in them and offer some non-traditional ways of presenting Flying Geese. They are designed primarily from blocks in the EQ7 block library, though I did design a few of the blocks myself. Take the challenge! See what new and different way you can present Flying Geese!” Find out more about Club EQ! >>>>Download