Monday, May 17, 2010

More Layouts in EQ6

Something I've been working on learning to do in EQ is create - and save - useful custom layouts. 

Recently I explored the irregular layouts that come in EQ6.  There are some very interesting and useful layouts there, but of course, I am not satisfied.  I want more!

Now, creating a custom layout is not real easy, but it's not real hard either.  The hard part is creating one that can actually be used for something!  I have many examples of really BAD layouts, but I don't think I'll share those!!!!

Once I figured out some tricks - like lining up blocks with the margin - and came up with a decent layout, my next challenge was to save it so it can be used again.  Turns out that's not so hard at all!

So after some "by guess and by gosh"  I came up with this, based on a photo of Esther Aliu's Red Delicious quilt and filled with the same half-square triangles you've seen before.

custom-halfsq

This is where some of the magic in EQ comes into play.  Let's move some of these to make it look more interesting.

custom-halfrotate

Not bad (if you like yellow!).  Let's try it with the four-patch.

custom-4patch

and the mosaic:

custom-mosaic

or Square in a Square (one of my favs)

custom-sqinsquare

Now I might be ready to really use this in a "theme" quilt.  In March I was playing with shamrocks.  Did you know you can use the heart shape to make a shamrock?  How about this?

bettershamrocks

I like it.  Yeah, I would want to adjust the appliques so they don't stretch or flatten so much, and maybe some adjustments would help those flying geese.  But I think we are starting to see something doable here.   And I'm having lots of fun, even if these designs and fabric never meet!

3 comments:

Gina E. said...

Thanks for your comment about my quilt, Liz. It will be my first and last one! My back is aching so badly this morning, after bending over that quilt yesterday, and my hands aren't much better. I think I'll stick to the smaller stuff from now on!

Anonymous said...

Liz,

I like it!

And I like it that custom layouts will be even easier in EQ7!

I also love the fact that I am learning so much about designing quilts, about what I like and don't like, without wasting fabric.

Judy B

Kay said...

I agree that the designing is great fun, no matter what happens to the design later. I find that learning about value is one of the best things about the computer programs.