Still More EQ6

I received a confirmation message on my copy of EQ7 today.  That means it will ship soon - like in 3 days!  Whoopeee!  I can't stand the excitement!!!

The more I experiment in this software, the more I realize how much there is yet to learn.  So, last month I signed up for a class on Quilt University.  The class I took was called EQ6 Building Blocks, taught by Fran Gonzales.  Man, oh man, did I ever learn a lot of cool stuff!

Since all four lessons were crammed with fun things, there's no way I can share all of it with you.  But wait 'til you see some of the highlights!

The primary purpose of the class was to learn how to analyze quilt blocks and then draw them in the software.

This block is called Origami and this is only one of the several color/fabric combinations I tried out.

 

It's also only one of the many blocks we learned to draw.  I put a few into quick quilt layouts just to see what would happen.

This block is called Palm.  It would be wonderful in the right fabrics, huh?

On this one I combined two blocks:  Log Cabin and New York Beauty.  Pretty hot!

The Dovetails block was a bonus exercise . . . and it took me a full afternoon to get it right!  I had to do something with it then, so I combined it with Texas Tears, which is a lot simpler.  I think they make a nice combination.

Then we worked on applique blocks.  Oooh, I may need to learn applique!

Fran led us through this first block step-by-step (but the fabric choices are all mine!  Can you tell?).  Then she encouraged us to try more on our own.

So, I came up with this one.  I decided to call it Winter Window after putting snowflakes in the window.  Lots of fun!

Fran designed this Daisy Chain and we used a Wreath tool to get the motifs in a circle.  I thought I'd try it out with one of the cone flowers I drew.

This is the quilt I put together using the cone flower wreath as a center.  This is the kind of thing that makes me enjoy looking at quilts.  As a bonus, I got some information about how to fix those blocks in the outer border.  They aren't quite square, but I can fix that simply by choosing another style of border.   Too easy!

Judy at Virtual Quilter suggested I play with the fabric libraries some more and I did get braver while working through this class.  What do you think, Judy?  Does this count?

Wednesday WOW - June 2

Blue stars are still coming along - slowly.  This is the last block pattern, tho, so maybe I will get busy on putting it all together.

Wednesday WOW - May 26

Well, the Hoffman project is finally started.  At least there's a head!

EQ6 and Fabric Selections

Judy at Virtual Quilter has been nagging encouraging me to play with using fabric in EQ6.  I needed to take some time to learn more about the fabric libraries first.

The default fabric selection is kind of tame for me, but I recently learned how to change the default selection, plus how to load a "custom" collection for the project file.  EQ provides a free fabric collection monthly and there are loads of luscious fabrics in each one.

Where to start?  One of my fabric colors is brown.  And one of the monthly collections was - surprise - browns!

 

Wish I could remember who these fabrics are by.  I just wrote down Winter Wonderland. 

And this one is Jungle Brites.  I like this.

The magic wand tool will take the colors you chose and map them to the fabric available in the project.  This can result in some less - er - eye-popping combinations.  Like this hot pink/bright yellow colored example.

Don't need sunshades for this, do you?

Or for this one using baby fabrics.

I love fabrics and I can see I am in for many hours of tooling around through the collections.  Oh me, oh my!  Where will the time come from?

Wednesday WOW - May 19

This is what I had planned to work on today:

Instead, this is what I found when I returned from a quick trip to town:

Looks like Sarge has found the source of our latest water leak.  He has a plan, so today I did some lessons in EQ6. 

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.

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

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

and the mosaic:

or Square in a Square (one of my favs)

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?

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!

Why We Read Directions

I worked on this month's Thimblerries block today.  Nice block, great instructions, and the two blocks went together really fast.  Until . . .

. . . I turned the page!  There was supposed to be a "right flower" and a "left flower."  As in, the fence posts face the other way.

Oh.