CONTENTS: Announcements -  Ask EQ -  Free Stuff -  Works For Me -  Show & Tell -  Quilter Community -  Quilt University -  A Quilt for Sean -  Club EQ -  Make it Simpler Paper Piecing -  EQ Mac Users Group -  Let's Make Marshmallows -  EQ & HP Sponsor Computer Labs -  Coming Soon from EQ -  Our Booth in Houston

Works for Me
Tips and "Odd EQ Uses" from EQ Users

Barbara's tote with the EQ5 "Doves" block, along with her granddaughter's haiku

Printed Panels for Tote Bags
Barbara Gilstad, San Antonio, Texas quilt teacher and coordinator of the 2004 EQ/HP Quilt Festival computer labs, has been using EQ5, Art-Wear sheets by June Tailor and her HP 1220 large-format printer to teach her students to make designs to be sewn to tote bags. In Barbara's class, her students use EQ5 to design a quilt, then print the quilt out onto fabric sheets which they sew to the front of small canvas tote bags.

Mary Ruth Flores, Ruth Felty and Gundy Cleven (left to right) proudly display their totes

A haiku poem written by Barbara's eight year old granddaughter, Mary, "who is into birds lately," suggested a bird theme for another tote bag. Barbara used the EQ5 Doves block. Here is Mary's haiku:

Dove—A Haiku

The dove is soft white

It sings so sweetly at dawn

Even when it rains

At the conclusion of a recent EQ5 class, three of Barbara's students personalized tote bags with their own original quilt layouts.

Quilts for Comfort

Quilts on display, made during one of Quilts for Comfort's Community Quilting Bees.

Edna Kotrola is President and founder of Quilts for Comfort in Newark, Delaware. This amazing group organizes Community Quilting Bees to make quilts for at-risk babies in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. To date they've made well over 2000 quilts.

"We bring in brand new quilters to our bees. For that reason, the pre-cut quilting kits have to be simple and easy to make," writes Edna. "That's my job. I cut the fabrics into 4 1/2" squares, scan the fabrics and put them into EQ5, then design a simple quilt for the participants to make.

Over 2700 women, men and children have participated in 143 Community Quilting Bees....Some of the people who came to a bee and didn't really know how to thread a machine have gone on to become really good quilters. Some have even purchased EQ5 for themselves." Visit the Quilts for Comfort website if you'd like to become involved.

Susan's Dresses are Successes
Susan Holt uses EQ5 to help design clothing for herself. She imports a schematic drawing from the back of a pattern envelope and creates a "block" by tracing that drawing. Each garment section is drawn as a separate closed patch. To make dart lines (or any other line segment in the pattern design) she draws a closed patch, then collapses the two sides of the patch together so they resemble lines. Susan writes, "Yes, this takes a lot of time (although I am getting better and faster at it), but since I use only a few basic patterns, I can then easily alter the design elements." Why does she go to this trouble? "The greatest advantage is color. I scan fabric and I can then color each design element of the pattern and decide what I like."
" I have also designed blocks for a valance for our sliding glass door using EQ5. The capability of resizing blocks is incredibly handy and useful! I made one for the Christmas season and one for the summer using stars for a patriotic theme and they are beautiful (my daughter gave her word of approval!). They were so easy to design and try different colorings and border widths!" Susan lives in Youngstown, Ohio.

Reproducing Antique Quilts
Gloria Driscoll is using EQ to reproduce quilts her mother left her. Alice writes, "When my Mom passed away, she left me about 30 antique quilts that were made by several members of my family. I have reproduced these quilts in EQ, starting with EQ3 and going on from there. Once the quilts were designed, I have made several printouts for display. I am now reproducing the actual quilts, plus making miniatures and more modern designs with the antique patterns. Mom left the quilts to be cherished. Little did she know how much fun I would have with them. Gloria lives in Richford, New York.

Here's one example of how Shannon uses EQ5 quilt images in her T-shirt designs

T-Shirts for Quilters
Shannon Haley-Funcke, who makes custom-designed wearables and gift items for quilters, uses EQ5 to produce the quilt images she transfers to T-shirts. Shannon's business, Treasured Threads Designs, is in Jefferson, Iowa.

Do you — EQ?
Elizabeth Fulghum uses EQ5 quilt designs to make greeting cards for quilters. Many are designed to accompany gift quilts. "There wasn't anything out there directed specifically to quilters. Lots of blank notecards with beautiful quilt pictures, but no "quilty" messages. So I created some!!" Visit Elizabeth's site to see her "Do You...EQ?" card, and other quilter-related cards.

click image for larger version

Dorothy Milligan's EQ printout. Her quilt was designed by importing scanned fabric imported as a photograph.

Importing Fabric as Pictures
Dorothy Milligan is a fan of Import Picture. "For a square in a square quilt I cut the fabric just the size for the quilt (six inch blocks), set it on point on the larger square, scanned it and saved it as a bitmap. Then I imported it as a picture and set it as a block." She did the same for her sashing. "Of course this only works for squares and rectangles, but for more complicated blocks one could actually sew the block (or just cut it out of fabric without seam allowances as I did.) That way one could easily audition different colors." My EQ printout is so close to the real quilt, I was truly amazed."

Dorothy, from Hemet, California, is often a "cover girl" with her EQ5 quilts. Her Leaf in a Leaf quilt made the cover of October's Quilter's World magazine. And she'll soon have a quilt published in a book on Log Cabin quilts from the House of White Birches. As Dorothy puts it, "It is almost too much excitement for this old lady."

CONTENTS: Announcements -  Ask EQ -  Free Stuff -  Works For Me -  Show & Tell -  Quilter Community -  Quilt University -  A Quilt for Sean -  Club EQ -  Make it Simpler Paper Piecing -  EQ Mac Users Group -  Let's Make Marshmallows -  EQ & HP Sponsor Computer Labs -  Coming Soon from EQ -  Our Booth in Houston