The Electric Quilt Company does a thorough job of listing all the wonderful features of its new Electric Quilt 6 design software and I see no need of repeating that information here on the Three Ducks site. Instead, I thought I would take you on a tour of EQ6 while I design a small quilt. In my pre-EQ days, I made a wall hanging that I was quite pleased with and I had the chance to visit it recently and I still like it very much. So, please grab a cuppa and join me as I reproduce that quilt using EQ6.
A new feature in EQ6 is the 'Tip of the Day' that appears after the opening splash screen. A new tip appears each time you open the programme. Don't skip them. They may not make sense right away but will as you use EQ6.
After you close the 'Tip,' the EQ6 Project Helper appears. There are three tabs on the helper and they are: Create a new project, Open an existing project and Start with a quick-quilt project. The last is a new feature in EQ6 and it offers you projects ready to go like the 'Amish Double Nine Patch' you see on the right.
However, I want to design my own project so I have clicked on the 'Create a new project' tab.
Now, I must enter a name for this project and I have decided I will call it 'West Coast Blues' and you will see why after we design the quilt. I click 'OK' and by default EQ6 will open a simple Horizontal quilt layout on the Quilt Worktable.
I want to design my block first so I can click on 'Worktable' on the top menu bar and select 'Work on Block' from the drop down list or I can click directly on the 'Work on Block' icon on the top toolbar.
Here is my block drawing worktable all set up. I am going to draw a pieced block and therefore I am on the 'Easy Draw' worktable. You can see the menu bar and below it the top toolbar with icons that move you quickly to certain EQ6 functions and features. Next is the Drawing Setup toolbar which you can choose to make visible and use or not. The drawing tools I will need are arranged down the left side. I know my block is a 'Four Patch' and will be 9"x 9" and I have set the size and have calculated my 'Snap Points' and my 'Graph Paper' size. The snap points and graph paper make drawing blocks easier and are features shared by most graphics programmes.
I found my block in Marsha McCloskey's 'Block Party' book. It is called 'Review.' As you can see, the 12 x 12 graph paper setting has made drawing the block an easy task. You do not have use the graph paper feature but it does help speed things along with most pieced blocks.
After drawing the block, I clicked on the colour tab to make sure all my lines are connecting and they are so now I can 'colour' my block with the fabrics of my choice. I am now going to go the fabric library to load my palette.
On the block worktable, I clicked on Libraries and then clicked on Fabric Library from the drop down list. You can see the Fabric Library above. Now, EQ6 comes with over 5,000 fabric swatches but why stop there? So, I have linked the library with the fabric libraries of other EQ products I have installed on my computer and you can see the result. My quilt fabrics are long gone but I wanted to try and duplicate them as closely as possible so I actually scrolled through all those libraries and that did take some time. I now have a good idea of what is available to me; however, there are other quicker ways to search for fabrics. In total, I added about 100 fabrics to my project sketchbook to give me room to experiment.
All the fabrics that I added to my project sketchbook will be displayed in the palette that appears when I return to the block worktable and click on the Colour tab. That palette appears on the left and you can resize it to make it larger and set how many fabrics you wish to view at one time. Selected fabrics appear in the upper box and fabrics you recently tried appear in the horizontal row below.
The tools I will need to colour my block are on the toolbar to the right. EQ6 presents a selection of tools by default but there are many more hidden that you can make available. I will use the paintbrush tool at the top for colouring my block.
Here is my finished block that I have saved to my project sketchbook. I am very pleased with how close I have matched the fabrics of the original quilt. Another new feature of EQ6 is the proper scaling of fabrics so that 'what you see is what you get' just as if you were making a real block or quilt. With EQ6, you can scan in the fabrics you plan to use or you can do as I did and try to closely match them.
At this point, I can print out a block pattern. To do this, I click on the printer icon on the top toolbar and I get the drop down list on the left. I can choose to print out the block image or choose one of three ways to construct the block: by foundation piecing, by templates or by rotary cutting. Below are the three different dialog boxes that appear for each of those construction options.
The upper left dialog box is for foundation piecing. EQ6 will offer you its layout interpretation for the block or you can choose your own sectioning and numbering which is what I did. The template dialog box is next followed by the rotary cutting.
Above are the three print preview screens for each of the three construction methods. The upper left is the foundation piecing preview followed by the template preview and last is for rotary cutting. In both the foundation piecing and template previews, the pieces where spread over an extra two to four sheets of paper. You can accept that or you can click 'Move', click on a pattern and move it somewhere else. The pieces highlighted in red have just been moved and the result is blank pieces of paper which will not be printed. The rotary cutting preview gives you thumbnail images of the fabrics in the block and tells you how many patches from each fabric need to be cut. You also get the fabric strip widths and cutting measurements for those patches. If you are satisfied with what you see in the preview, you can click on the print button.
My block construction is complete and I have been saving my work as I go along so I am now going to close EQ6 and take a break. In the second part of this tour, I will reopen my 'West Coast Blues' project and begin designing the quilt. I hope you will join me.
Happy QuiltingAnita