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


Dear Friends,

To read this Floppy Gazette, click on the blue links above. Notice that the "View Other Floppy Gazettes" link, above, lets you read past issues.

We have interviews with book authors, a downloadable tessellation project, a free EQ5 lesson, announcements of where you can take EQ5 classes, and more in this issue.

Dear Jane Quilt Design Software
As we write this in February, the long-awaited Dear Jane quilt design program is about to be released the week of February 24th.

This software is the companion to Brenda Papadakis's popular 1996 book, Dear Jane: The Two Hundred Twenty-Five Patterns from the 1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt. The world-wide popularity of this beautiful quilt has created a quilt-world craze, which we've tried to capture in our software. See this page for more details.

Here's a bit of what Dear Jane will include:
- All 225 patterns, printable in any size, as foundations and rotary cutting charts when possible
- 100 alternate blocks
- EQ5-like quilt design tools to let you design your own Dear Jane quilts from scratch, using these blocks
- A magic recolor tool
- A step-by-step wizard design helper
- A gallery of 60 quilts and projects, from classic to quick
- Videotaped interviews with Brenda Papadakis
- Brenda's 12 lessons, perfect for beginners
- Sewing tips for each block

We sneak-previewed Dear Jane at the 2002 International Quilt Market and Festival in Houston. Eilleen Horgan, from Winthrop, Massachusetts, made us look beautiful by lending us her fabulous Dear Jane quilt for our booth.

Dear Jane will have a CD-ROM disc and a 264 page user manual with 32 quilts shown in color. The retail price will be $49.95.

EQ5 Drawing Book by Patti Anderson

If you've ever wanted to draw your own quilt block designs -- whether you're a beginner or a designer seeking publication -- this new book is for you! EQ5 teacher, Patti Anderson's EQ5 Drawing will show you how to draw in 52 easy lessons. EQ5's drawing tools are so powerful that we doubt that many users ever use them to their full potential. With Patti's help, you can. She starts out easy and builds until you're drawing blocks you never imagined possible. Read more about Patti's book here. Try out Patti's easy lesson here.


EQ5 Simplified
Fran Gonzalez's popular EQ5 Simplified book has come out since our last Floppy Gazette, complete with quilts in color. Her tutorials were completely re-written for EQ5. We're sometimes asked "What's the difference between EQ5 Simplified and the EQ5 Design Cookbook." The Design Cookbook details how EQ5 tools work; Fran's tutorials teach you to design with the tools. Imagine the difference between reading your sewing machine manual, and taking a design class.

EQ5 Classes Online and in Paducah and Houston
Online: Fran Gonzalez and Patti Anderson both teach online EQ5 classes on www.quiltuniversity.com.

At the AQS Show: Barb Vlack will teach 8 hands-on EQ5 classes in Paducah, Kentucky from April 23 - April 26, 2003.

At Quilt Festival: Barb Vlack and Fran Gonzalez will teach 6 1/2 days of hands-on EQ5 classes during the International Quilt Market and Festival in Houston, Texas from October 27 - November 2, 2003. During the week, Barb and Fran will each team-teach a Printer Magic class with Craig Hamer from Hewlett-Packard. Watch our Web site for a class schedule and how to sign up. And see Craig's article on "Color Printing Tips" in this newsletter. Barbara Gilstad, our class administrator, and will be looking for classroom helpers. Contact us if you're interested.

HP Custom Quilt Label Kit
At the fall International Quilt Festival, we also had the fun of helping Hewlett-Packard with the release of their new HP Custom Quilt Label Kit software. This CD ROM (for PC’s and Macs) lets you create one-of-a-kind, professional-quality quilt labels – 8 ½” x 11” story labels, smaller “Made-by” labels, and even matching gift cards! It comes with hundreds of images, phrases, clip art, borders and backgrounds, but you can also import EQ blocks and quilts, or your own photos and fabric. EQ user, Tricia Autry, sold the software for us in HP’s booth while HP employees demonstrated it all around her. It was wild. We like the software so much that we offer it here.

Be sure to visit HP Quilting on the Web. They’ll update projects on this site regularly, and right now it has the most detailed information we’ve seen about printing on fabric.

Anniversary Contest
Take a chance, and help us celebrate our Tenth Anniversary by entering our quilt contest. There are fourteen chances to win either a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 1220 printer, or EQ products, or both. Contest deadline: September 1, 2003. See the Anniversary Contest page for more information.

What else is Coming in 2003?
- A pattern book and CD-ROM by popular designer, Karen Stone, of New York Beauty fame.
- Barb Vlack's tutorial, EQ5 Quilt Design
- Susan McKelvey's tutorial, EQ5 Color
- Classic Applique pattern CD
- Also, EQ5 will be featured on TV this year on four different shows. Watch for us on Quilt Central, show 303 (airs at different times on different stations). We'll let you know more when we know.

Thanks to all of you!
Thanks to your support, last year was a great one for us. You users of our software are such a vital part of our business. You offer us suggestions, questions, feedback of all sorts, and we will never stop listening. We're lucky you take the time to call and write. Thank you all for helping us improve our products.

And thanks to Ryan Richmond for helping with this issue. Ryan is so new to EQ Company that his name is not below.

Peaceful wishes from us all-

Dean, Penny, Ann, Margaret, Andrea, Lu, Jill, Jan, Sara, Sharon, Kevin, Monica, Angie, Elena, Tracey and EQ the Mouse.