I’m going to start with a pause to look back to sing the praises of EQ8 from Electric Quilt.
Though I don’t use the software as often as I would like, I do find it very useful. On the simple side of things, I use it to resize common quilt blocks and to cut templates in the needed sizes. Also on the simpler side, I use it to audition various layouts. In a very short period of time, I can see what a quilt might look like if I sewed the blocks together side by side…or if I put a sash between blocks…or what it would look like if I set the blocks on point instead of side by side. What if I combined two different blocks in the same quilt? What if I changed the placement of fabrics putting the bright in the background and the black in the foreground and on and on.
My point is, even if you aren’t very skilled with EQ8 (I’m definitely not) and even if you don’t use the features that allow you to design a quilt from scratch, there’s still plenty that EQ8 can do to aid your ability to see how a given choice might impact the appearance of the quilt – BEFORE you invest the time and fabric in creating the quilt. The software can help you estimate how much fabric you will need for the given patches in a given quilt. I find that a useful feature as well.
The things I mentioned above are the abilities of the program which I use all the time. They’re pretty simple to learn. If you use the program often, your skills at using these common features will grow and you’ll soon be operating the program like a pro. If you use the software less often (like me) you’ll have a bit of a learning curve each time you open it as you will need to relearn what you’ve learned before.
Even if you’re only a sometimes user, it is possible to learn to design a quilt from scratch…and that’s where the features of EQ8 really strut their stuff.
I am not very good at math, and frankly, I don’t enjoy math very much, so, while I probably COULD figure out how to build a somewhat complex quilt from scratch, it’s not something that I would enjoy very much. I would face some limitations on what I’d want to try to do when combining different sizes of blocks…different sizes of borders…pieced borders, with pieced blocks of various sizes and so on.
So…when I was commissioned to make a horse quilt for a little girl’s Christmas present back in 2019, I took a deeper dive into EQ8. Over the span of a few days, I designed the quilt above. It did require relearning a few of the things I’d forgotten since I’d last used the program and it did require learning new things, but I discovered that it wasn’t that difficult. I pretty much relied on the in program help files, and Google, which is a big help as it often turned up blog posts and videos on how to do different things.
Within a few days I’d designed the basic quilt. I spent a few more days playing with certain blocks and changing color placement and saving each version.
Some people use the program to get very specific about what the finished quilt will look like, even using the actual fabrics that they will use for the quilt in their design. Personally, I don’t do that. I like a few surprises…so I might use a fabric in large scale where I would use a large scale fabric in the design…and I’ll pick something that is an approximate color and value to play with in the design…but I don’t use the specific fabrics – in most cases. I do take a photograph of panels if I’m going to use a panel in a quilt, as I did with the above quilt. I use the photo of the panel as a fabric in my design as it helps to see the scale of the panel with other blocks and it’s helpful for matching colors.
In 2019 I was quilting quite a bit, and I was using EQ8 quite a lot. Time has passed and it is 2023 and there’ve been a handful of years in which I haven’t quilted much at all and I haven’t touched the software. Now that life has calmed somewhat and I’m quilting again I find that I’m intrigued by different things than I was before making the horse quilt in 2019.
Before the horse quilt I mostly put quilts together with identical blocks set side by side. I was intrigued with what it looked like if I used different colors or different scales for different quilts…but now I find I want to play more broadly. I want to combine different sizes of blocks…perhaps several different blocks in the same quilt. I might want to make a large center block with smaller blocks or borders on the outside. For that I will need to make friends with EQ8.
So…looking back, my quilting wasn’t that much design focused. As I look forward and think about the balance of 2023 I have a lot of quilts to finish. These are the quilts with blocks set side by side. But as I look further forward into 2024, I want to focus more on designing quilts – and then making the quilts I design.
So…as we move into 2024, my hope is to have more projects like the horse quilt. I’m sure there will still be the blocks set side by side quilts too. They still speak to me…but there are other voices too…these voices say…but what if you used some big blocks and some small blocks and some pieced borders. What if you used a big center medallion block…what if…what if…
EQ8 is software for exploring all the what ifs.
I’m linking up with Threading My Way, Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Monday This and That, The Happy Now Blog Linkup, and Melva Loves Scraps,
