EQ8

December 2018
Autumn/Hallowe’en Happy Garden quilt

Do you ever have multiple names for quilts?  I started with 'Happy Garden' as a name, but really, I'm focusing on fall and Hallowe'en colours and  ideas, so I have to have this long name!  This is the plan I started with on EQ8.  I didn't know how to incorporate my embroidery designs, so I printed them out and put tape on the back and then taped them in place so that I would know what colours I would need on the corners of the snowball blocks where they were placed.  You might notice that I wanted a specific colour on some of the corners.
Well, I was looking through this Facebook group:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/electricquilt/  and noticed a post by a user about how to use photos.  Karen Copstead was so helpful and her advice sent me to my embroidery software to export an image of the embroidery I wanted to use.  For some photos, I used the 'Snipping Tool' that comes with Windows 10 (it is very useful).  Then in EQ8 I could import the photos into the Photo Library and copy them to My Sketchbook for this project! 

With a little more work, I ended up with the photos and the border plan:

This quilt is going to be on the wall of our sunroom, so I need it to be about 61" x 50".  The bottom will be behind the couch, so I don't need a border along the bottom.  I really enjoyed making this quilt.  I will be picking it up from my longarmer Melissa McIntosh next week.  Last December, I won a coupon for 'quilt basting' from her in our money raising event for the local Food Bank.  So I asked Melissa to baste this quilt so that I can quilt each of the snowball blocks differently.
Here is the quilt top:

It's great when a quilt turns out the way you plan (or almost)!


November 2018

EQ Celtic

At our last quilt club meeting, Rolanda taught a lesson on Celtic blocks.  It included the history of Celtic knots, the main ones and some of the characteristics.  She handed out a few ideas and challenged us to complete one.  Well, since I’m in the middle of my Autumn/Hallowe’en Happy Garden quilt, there was no way to make an extra block that would not fit my theme!

Time for Electric Quilt 8® (www.electricquilt.com ) to help me design a celtic pumpkin – how hard could it be?  Hard!  Have you ever designed a celtic knot?  That would fit into a pumpkin outline and then on a 9½″ background?  So after trying a few ideas, I decided to look on the Internet for a celtic pumpkin that I might be able to trace on EQ8 (I love this feature – I’m not an artist!)

I found a great one at:  www.redbubble.com/people/stacymitchell/works/28487839-celtic-knot-pumpkin-halloween-fall-autumn?p=lightweight-hoodie&rel=carousel

And after saving the image in the ‘Images’ folder inside the ‘My EQ8’ folder,

I started the program and chose ‘appliqué motif’ as a new block drawing board.  I didn’t really need to set the size at 8″ because you can print out a motif at whatever size you like.  Then I started using the ‘stroke’ tool to draw the elements of the braids that they had in the image and thinking about how I could do the block in my sewing room. 

I hadn’t finished the tracing before I took a look at what it would look like and decided on a different style.

I often use machine embroidery projects from www.emblibrary.com because they sew out well and they have a large variety to choose from.  I really liked this Celtic pumpkin

and wondered if I could create a quilt block similar.  So I imported an image of the pumpkin and traced 3 elements for the basic 3 shapes.  Using the ‘edit’ tool is the best aid for this task.  You can add nodes wherever you like and when you click on a node, you will activate the handles so that you can change the look of the shape. You can see the 2 samples showing how the handles appear when you click on a node with the 'edit' tool.  You can see in the second one how much I was able to change the shape just by moving the handles.   Electric Quilt has a good article on this at:  https://support.electricquilt.com/articles/editing-nodes/

After I set up the 3 main shapes, I added a pentagon on top, so that I could make a celtic knot inside the pumpkin.  Then I had to edit the nodes of the central shape of the pumpkin to sit around this pentagon.

After doing all that I previewed how the shapes would print out.  I tend to move shapes around to try to print everything on one page only.  I figure that I will usually trace shapes on freezer paper (sometimes I’ll print the whole pattern on freezer paper) and then iron to fabric and cut out.

I made my celtic binding ¼″ wide and then started creating a symmetrical shape inside the pumpkin.  I am quite disappointed with the results and think that I should have created ¹/₈″ binding.  Oh well…. One more learning experience!

What would you do?  Start over?  In some circumstances I do, but sometimes I just want to get on with a project.

October 2018
I love quilting and I use a computer so it was a 'no-brainer' for me to use a quilt design software.  I have used a few different ones but have 'landed' on Electric Quilt 8®.  I think it is the best, easiest quilt design program available.

I write an article quarterly in The Canadian Quilter about Electric Quilt 8 and am always trying to figure out new topics to share with the readers.  This magazine is published by the Canadian Quilters Association/association Canadienne de courtepointe (http://canadianquilter.com ) and as I always say, “If you’re Canadian and a quilter, why wouldn’t you belong to this association?”

In the last couple of issues, I’ve written about turning drawings into appliqué designs and developing modern quilts.  I know at least one person read the articles because I had one request for the turtle design in a specific size – which I was glad to produce!!

I know the problems and I try to give feedback to articles I read – but it only happens once in a while!  
Well that's me and since quilt club and quilt guild season has started - so there's lots more to fill the days!!  (And, in the spare moments...I guess I should get the outdoors ready for winter!!)