EQ!

I LOVE working in my EQ7 program.

Yesterday, I sat down and designed a quilt for my granddaughter Myah who will soon turn three (see top photo).

Big changes coming up in her life--she will have a new baby brother in a few months and will be moving into a new house. Her bedroom in that new house WILL be purple, she says, and, of course, she will be moving up to a "big-girl" bed!

Now, that baby quilt Grammie made three years ago just won't cut it on a "big-girl" bed.

Hence, the quilt I designed yesterday.

After a blissful hour last week in Creative Needle, one of my favorite quilt shops, I emerged with my purple treasures (see next two photos). Okay, I didn't use butterfly appliques on the quilt, so why is the focus fabric cut out like a butterfly? I wanted to play around with the photo in Photoshop (just having some fun).

Back home, I scanned all of my new fabrics into EQ. That's the feature I most love about this program. Since I can design blocks and quilts with my actual fabrics in them, I know exactly how a quilt will look before I begin cutting away.

And I can determine if I have enough of each fabric for the design I have chosen, as the program displays yardage requirements. If my yardage printout says that I need 3/4 yd of that dark accent fabric, but I have only 1/2 yd., I know that I need to remove some of it from my design and replace it with a different fabric (or change my design).

For Myah's quilt I decided I wanted to create a strip design with some unpieced strips along with various types of pieced blocks in the other strips. I wanted the quilt to be feminine, so I chose two types of basket blocks and a petal dresden plate block.

After fiddling, rearranging, adding, removing, and resizing for NUMEROUS hours, the above design is my finished creation. I like it!

Okay, all this computer stuff is fun, but now it's time to get to the cutting and sewing!

~ Sandy

Do you EQ? This adorable and uber personalizable (is that a word?) bag was offered as a free download from Electric Quilt this summer. I stitched it up for my little granddaughter for her to carry her library books home in. All of the "paper dolls" on the sides are her cousins. Was I tempted to keep it for myself? You bet! Guess I'll have to whip up another one!

Sandy