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Importing Fabrics into EQ7

June 15, 2010 By Judy

On the occasions when I do need to use my own fabric in an EQ drawing, it’s so easy with EQ7.  The best way to do it is to scan each fabric individually and import those.  My scanner is not my friend!  If I used it more, I’d get a different one.  I suppose the worst problem with it is . . please don’t laugh . . it’s part of my printer.  I print too much stuff and leave it in the printer.  We all share the same networked laser printer.  We each have our own inkjet . . don’t ask me why . . but everyone uses the laser.  When Vince or Chad come to get something they’ve printed, they take all my stuff and put it on top of the printer . . which means before I can scan anything, I have to move mountains of paper.  So, I never use my scanner!

Now you know I’m a lazy slob so I’ll share with you the lazy way I get my fabrics into EQ.

I lay them all out and take a picture of the whole group.

Then I crop out a square of each fabric and save it separately.  I end up with these .jpg files in my picture folder.

Then following the directions in the EQ7 book, pages 208-209, I import the fabric files into my sketchbook and can plug them into my design.  Using the camera vs. the scanner, I do get some tiling in my sketch but that doesn’t affect the sketch enough for me to take the time to scan each fabric individually.

One bit of advice is to take your photo using the best light to produce an accurate image of your fabric.  In this picture, I had these fabrics laying in a darker spot in my sewing room where there was a halogen light.

The next photo is the same fabrics but moved to an area of the sewing room with better lighting.

The second photo is much more true to the fabric.  If we want an accurate sketch of how the quilt will look with a specific fabric, we have to be very careful to get the color as close to true as possible.

Almost all the time I can find a fabric in the EQ fabric library that works with my design without importing my own fabric.  There are many, many fabric palettes that can be downloaded from EQ here and added to your fabric library.

Tagged Electric Quilt, Importing Fabric Filed Under Quilting, Tutorials 9 Comments

Celebration Fabrics Changed

June 12, 2010 By Judy

No matter how I looked at the two earlier sets of fabric, I wasn’t pleased with them.  I switched the setting triangle fabric and made it the sashing fabric and added this fabric for the setting triangles.

It’s one of those ugly fabrics . . why did I buy this? . . kind of fabric, but I think it may work here..  Here it is in the stack of fabrics:

Since I only work in tone on tone fabrics, I usually do not scan or photograph my fabrics and import them into Electric Quilt.  There are plenty similar fabrics in the EQ libraries that I can use and get a good enough idea of how my quilts will look.  For this project, with the subtle tone and value changes making a big difference, I did photograph my quilts and import them into EQ and then plug those fabrics into the sketch.  Here’s what I ended up with:

This is pretty much exactly the look I’m wanting.  Just a very little bit of change in the setting triangles and sashing, though I think in reality, there will be a bit more change that it appears in this sketch.  Now I can’t wait to get started.


Tagged Celebration of Freedom, Electric Quilt, Importing Fabric Filed Under Quilting 25 Comments

Small Town Post Office

June 8, 2010 By Judy

EQ7 arrived last week.  Boxes and boxes of EQ filled my dining room. Since I was sending them out using padded envelopes and printing priority mail postage paid labels at home, I wanted to be sure the post office was happy with my system before I did them all so Friday I took the international packages and one U. S. package to the post office for their approval.  They were happy!

Vince helped me stuff the envelopes and we got them all ready.

We filled up the back of Vince’s pickup and left some of the boxes on the front porch.  The Postmaster himself came and got them all on Saturday mid-morning.  I was hoping the packages would start arriving at their destinations by Wednesday but . . many of them arrived on Monday, come in Connecticut, New Jersey, Arizona . . all over!  That’s amazing!  Great service from my local post office and fast delivery across the nation.  I’m impressed!

Tagged Electric Quilt, USPS Filed Under Home & Garden 23 Comments

The Winner Is . .

June 5, 2010 By Judy

First, my birthday isn’t til Sunday (June 6) so you still have time to get an expensive gift and drive to MO to deliver it!  :)

The winner from 230 numbered comments is:

And the 141st comment happens to be:

So, KnittySue, if you will send me  your address, a full version of EQ7 will be heading your way.  Thanks to all who left comments.  I loved reading them and chuckled about so many of the.  It made Vince feel really good that so many of you think of him when you think of the blog.

I’ve always said I’d keep blogging even if there were no readers because it’s kinda like my diary but it’s so much fun having a few readers.  I appreciate all of you . . really!

Tagged Electric Quilt Filed Under Quilting 17 Comments
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