The Electric Quilt Company: Users: Newsletters and EQ Mailings

CONTENTS: Announcements - Ask EQ - Free Stuff - Works For Me - Show & Tell - Quilt University - Hidden Block Quilts - Tessellating Fish - Designs by Alene - Karin Hellaby - Mischele Hart & Ann Castleberry - Color Printing Tips - Electric Quilt Computer Lab

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

EQ5 Blocks as Floor Tiles

Floor Tiles

We printed EQ blocks and used them as "floor tiles" for our booth at the International Quilt Market/Festival in Houston last fall (and have done it for the last two years). Nice look, we think! Here's how we did it. We had some large sheets of paper-backed fabric that we cut to 13 x 13. We fed this through our large format HP 1220 printer, printing 12" x 12" blocks from EQ5. Leaving the paper on the fabric, we taped the blocks to the convention center's dark concrete floor using 2" wide black carpet tape. The blocks kept their fresh look throughout the week-long show, as we gathered compliments. We think it would work to varnish over the blocks for a long-lasting floor, though we've not done it. (Our thanks to Craig Hamer from Hewlett-Packard for the photo.)

Speaking of Floor Tiles ...

Kay Hobden writes: "I decided that our family room needed a new floor covering. I wanted ceramic tiles in a fancy pattern. I planned to buy the tiles myself and have a friend lay them, so guess what I used to work out the pattern and how many to buy? Kay lives in Sussex Inlet, NSW, Australia.

Blocks as Illustrations

Angie Padilla, from Quito, Ecuador writes: I live in a country with no quilting tradition and recently started my own quilting business. Since there are practically no quilting books or patterns published in Spanish, I am producing my own for my students... I used EQ5 (together with Photoshop and Publisher) to illustrate a Spanish day planner that includes a BOM project for 2003. To see Angie's Day Planner, click here.

Quilt Shirts and Clocks

Mary Aslanis, of Redlands, California, tells us how she uses EQ blocks on t-shirts starting with a block printout on paper.

1 Serge around the edges of a cotton decorative fabric -- 1" larger than the quilt block. This is not a time for Wonder Under, but a stabilizer of some sort makes the final sewing step much easier. 2 Using a knit t-shirt, place the cotton fabric, on the wrong side of the t-shirt, in the desired location. Be sure it is bigger than your quilt block.

3 Pin or spray baste securely.

4 Using a temporary spray adhesive or your favorite method, secure your paper quilt block on the right side of your t-shirt. Double check that the quilt block is centered on top of your decorative fabric.

5 Stitch along the quilt block designs, using decorative thread if desired. Yes, you are stitching through the paper, t-shirt, decorative fabric and stabilizer.

6 After you have completely stitched, remove the paper entirely. Now carefully on the INSIDE of your quilt block, cut away all of the knit fabric. The knit fabric won't ravel (my shirt has been washed MANY times), and your decorative fabric underneath is revealed. The finished product is only limited by your imagination. This also works well with sweatshirt material.

Mary's husband, a woodworker, uses EQ to design "quilt clocks" using traditional block designs. "He used the templates to cut veneer pieces in various colors of woods. Quite dramatic completed projects and ones I dearly love. He even made Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam, using the marquetry technique. Lots of fun."

Poetry in Quilts

Nan Scott

Nan Scott, of Baltimore, Maryland, tells us how she put a poem onto her quilt. "I'm doing a wedding quilt, for a friend. The existing Great Notions (Amazing Designs) embroidery library has wonderful wedding designs, and luckily, I had them in my embroidery design collection. What I needed to add was the poem my friend read at the couple's wedding. If there's a will, there's a way: Here's what I did. I digitized my poem, in PE-DESIGN. I hit the simulated view. Hit alt-prnt screen. Got a screen capture. Opened Windows Paint. New, paste. Used the crop tool, and cut out just the embroidery design. Chose new, do not save existing design. Changed the image attributes to 1" x 1". Did a paste, and my embroidery image came up on the screen. You need to tell the program to make the design page bigger. It will size it to fit the cut- out design. I saved the design as a bitmap with a white background. Now, when I want to use it in a quilt, I use the paint can fill and color the background the color of the fabric I will embroider it on. Then I import it into my quilt, through the import picture method. I've attached the bmp of one view of the quilt. The poem look like it is black embroidery but is really dark gold.

Stained Glass and Kids Projects

Jeannie Prue, of Newport, Vermont, turned her niece's two children into stained glass patchwork blocks. See them here. Her project started with the "Square inside Octagon" stained glass block from Sew Precise 4. "I played around with image editing software, "posterizing" pictures of my niece's kids," Jeannie explains. "They looked just right to place into a stained glass window. I used Bubble Jet Set and my inkjet printer to transfer the images. What a fun project!"

Jeanne also involved her grandsons in EQ. "We started designing their quilts in EQ, then took a trip to the fabric store where they each chose their own fabrics. I did the cutting but they ended up doing all their own sewing. I had planned to have the 5-year old just hand stitch around a fused shape, but he insisted he could sew at the machine, too. Both boys did remarkably well. They made "driving" that machine look like so much fun, their 7year old brother finally gave in and asked to make a quilt now, too. His brothers are already raring to go on their next project. What have I gotten myself into?!:" See the boys' quilts here.

Impress your Electrician!

Nancy Welch impressed her electrician! Let her tell the story: "Last June we replaced two recessed ceiling fan lights with lights. The light boxes were 12-inch squares. I amazed the electrician when I knew that the medallions needed to cover the square holes had to be at least 17 inches. He said ladies always buy 12-inch medallions to cover a 12-inch square. I said they were not quilters who could use EQ5 to find out the size. That little ruler tool comes pretty close to sliced bread!" Nancy lives in Jackson, Mississippi.