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Volume 9, No. 1, Summer 2002
View Other Floppy Gazettes

CONTENTS: Announcements - Ask EQ - Free Stuff - Works For Me - Show & Tell - Quilt University - Printing on Fabric - Quilters' Colors Patriotic Pin - Tips For Printing On Fabric - Linda Franz - Betty Ensz & Laura Jane Quint - Create a Coloring Book.

Create a Coloring Book
By Barbara Gilstad

Barbara Gilstad, of San Antonio, Texas, delights in developing ways to engage her grandchildren in her passion for quilt designing with EQ4. Her Alphabet Quilt: Classic Pieced Patchwork Coloring Book is just one example.

Alphabet Quilt

To start designing my coloring book, I first made a very basic 28 block quilt layout with 7 horizontal and 4 vertical blocks. Next, I identified, copied, and saved twenty-six blocks from the EQ Libraries, each startingwith a different letter in the alphabet, and set them in the horizontal quilt layout. Since I could not find any blocks that were exactly what I wanted for the letters "Q" and "X", I designed my own and added them to the quilt layout. I filled the two remaining blocks, sashing, and border with plain fabric.

After saving and naming the quilt, Alphabet Quilt: Classic Pieced Patchwork Coloring Book, I made a second horizontal quilt layout with a slightly different orientation (5 horizontal and 6 vertical blocks) into which I randomly set 30 blocks (including the same 26 blocks starting with the first letters of the alphabet used in the original quilt layout, and 4 plain fabric blocks).

Coloring book page - Q is for Q-Patch

I saved and named the second quilt, Alphabet Quilt Game. I also saved both quilts as bitmaps. Then I used the first quilt on the cover of the coloring book and the second quilt as a game board.

Next, I saved each of the line drawings of the 26 alphabet blocks as bitmaps. Using PowerPoint, I designed the overall format for the coloring book, which included: a title page, a dedication page, a table of contents, twenty-six pages for the line drawings of the blocks, a page of questions to encourage reflection on the blocks' origins, a reference page, a page suggesting ideas for how to use the game board quilt, and a few blank pages for Sketches and Notes. [Editor's note: Barbara used PowerPoint. You could simply print quilt and block line drawings right from EQ using the outline drawing option in Print>Block and Print>Quilt.]

When all these pages were complete and compiled, I printed one coloring book, plus a game board, for each grandchild and bound each book by inserting plastic spirals into punched holes. As a finishing touch, I attached baggies containing colorful game pieces and sets of dice to the coloring books and sent the coloring books on their way.

I had so much fun making the coloring books that I'm working on designing quilts based on my grandchildren's favorite children's books now. And we're going to start making them when they come to visit us in Texas in August. Are we having fun? Indeed, we are!

CONTENTS: Announcements - Ask EQ - Free Stuff - Works For Me - Show & Tell - Quilt University - Printing on Fabric - Quilters' Colors Patriotic Pin - Tips For Printing On Fabric - Linda Franz - Betty Ensz & Laura Jane Quint - Create a Coloring Book.

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