The Electric Quilt Company: Users: Newsletters and EQ Mailings

CONTENTS: Announcements - Ask EQ - Works For Me - Show & Tell - Quilt University - Floral Illusions - Club EQ - From Computer to Catalog - EQ Haiku - Yankee Doodle Jane - Designing a Jacket with EQ5 - EQ on TV - EQ in the College Classroom - Anniversary Contest- EQ Computer Lab at Houston Quilt Festival

Designing a Jacket with EQ5

by Carol Seubert

We saw Carol's fabulous jacket when she walked up to our booth at the Lancaster Heritage Quilt Festival this spring. When she said she'd used EQ5 to make it, we asked Carol to write this article.

The front of Carol's "fun fabric" jacket.

When I was attending the Lancaster Heritage Quilt Festival this Spring, I had the pleasure of meeting Penny, Dean and Barb Vlack. It was wonderful to be able to put faces to the people who have provided me with such a great tool - EQ5 - and all the support to use it to its full potential. (I did miss meeting EQ mouse, though!)

While we were talking, the subject of using EQ5 to design fabric for a jacket came up and whether it could be done in EQ5. I had taught a class in Embellished Clothing using Gail Garber's Scrap Wrap jacket. See Gail's jacket here. This jacket offers many opportunities for making the "fun fabric," as Gail describes it. My students were not all experienced quilters, so I felt that a little additional help designing their fabric would be helpful.

Here's how I did it in EQ:

1. I chose paper-pieced blocks from the library that I felt would be suitable for the jacket. This would allow accuracy in the block sizes for all the students.

2. I used the Custom Set layout (click QUILT on the main menu, point to New Quilt - click Custom Set.) The custom set layout provides a large central area for placing blocks of different sizes.

3. I measured the largest of the jacket pattern pieces then made my quilt that size. For example, the jacket back needed about 30" x 30".

4. Then I added blocks and strips to the layout, aligning them using the graph pad, until my layout resembled the shape of the jacket pattern piece. I used 5" blocks. The plain blocks were also 5" or divisions of 5".

5. I colored the blocks with fabrics that resembled the marbled fabrics I had chosen for my jacket.

6. I exported snapshots (bitmaps) from EQ to use in my instructions, giving the students a very realistic depiction of the fabric piece they were designing. I explained that the picture was just an approximation of their fabric, and that blocks and colors should be placed according to their own individual preference, so each jacket would be strictly a "one of a kind" creation. Pieced blocks could replace plain and vice versa, giving students a lot of leeway to assert their own creativity in making the fabrics.

I did the same thing for the jacket fronts and sleeves, again shaping the blocks to an approximate pattern shape. I combined the front pieces when I designed the front layout and then placed the front pattern pieces together and laid them out on the pieced fabric so that the blocks from both sides of the front would align across the jacket and I closed the jacket with fabric covered buttons, using the multicolor fabrics of the jacket.

Once the fabric sections were pieced, the patterns were placed on the fabric and cut. From there we went on to assemble the jackets following the pattern instructions. Each student finished a beautiful jacket and I know that they appreciated the additional visual help provided by the printouts from Electric Quilt.

Carol's jacket from the back.

I'm currently working on a jacket, with EQ's help, that will use embroidered and plain blocks in the jacket front. I'm designing that fabric by using the measurements of my embroidery projects and placing them in a similar layout as described above. With the ability to add pictures to my layout, I'll actually be able to see what the finished fabric piece looks like before I start the fabric assembly. I'll also have cutting measurements for each block in my layout. Using the custom set layout allows you to put your blocks together just like a jigsaw puzzle, adjusting blocks as necessary to fill in your pieced fabric.

Have fun designing your own patchwork fabric in EQ5!