I opened up the large star block in the Block Worktable and added a smaller square to the block, clicked over to the coloring and made it my own: Since part of the fun of EQ8 is making the blocks your own, I decided to tweak the large star first.
I used just a standard quilt layout, but EQ8 has many options before you even start adding blocks to a quilt, including options that were not available in EQ7, such as variable block sizes (maybe my Quattro Mini Quilt will became a pattern someday!).
I started with an idea of a combination of an Irish Chain and a star block, so I opened a new quilt and chose a star and an Irish Chain from the default EQ8 library (yes, it’s full of traditional blocks just waiting to be used!) So, I wanted to share with you some screenshots of how I designed my latest (coming next week!) quilt pattern with EQ8, in case you were curious how I actually use it. Although most of those things never made it into quilt patterns, having the ability to try out a block before I ever cut fabric has been invaluable. I didn't upload fabrics because I wasn't sure what I wanted to use at the time, but the colors that I used ended up inspiring my fabric choice.**This post is sponsored by The Electric Quilt Company**įor the past several years I’ve used Electric Quilt 7 (EQ7) to design not only quilt patterns, but also rounds for the Round Robin Quilt Bee I participated in, for foundation paper pieced blocks I wanted to make, pillows, even bags and pouches. I made a mockup of my Schnitzel and Boo mini quilt using the program and altered the block sizes until it was the right size.
One of the most useful features is being able to easily change the size of blocks. You can also open up a block from the library and make changes to it to adapt it to your own project. There is a huge library of quilt blocks and quilt layouts that make it easy to test new ideas.Even though I do like to try out specific fabrics in a quilt design, I also like the ability to play around with the fabrics in the program because I don't always have specific fabrics in mind. You can also use the EQ7 library of fabrics and solid colors. It is easy and fast and you can see the actual fabrics in your quilt. Here are a few of my favorite things about EQ7: One of the nice things about EQ7 is that even though it's new for Mac, it's not a new program and there are a lot of resources available.
It definitely has a learning curve and I am still learning how to do things, but it has saved me so much time and has allowed me to try so many new ideas.Įlectric Quilt also has tons of info on their website. I'm not saying that it was instantly easy. I can honestly say that I was blown away by EQ7. I have also used Touchdraw on my iPad which is actually not too bad, but it certainly has its limitations. I have tried Photoshop, but I don't really know much about the program beyond photo editing, and designing quilts took me forever. That method is limiting for me because I am not very good at drawing and it took quite a bit of time. Up until recently I have primarily done my quilt designing with a pencil and paper.
Let me say first that I didn't really know that much about the program.