How EQ8 Helps My Business
Do you EQ? I love that tagline, because I do EQ. I've been using Electric Quilter software since way back in the days when you had to order a physical copy and stick a CD-ROM in the computer. For the first few years I mostly just played with the software, drawing quilts I would never make with fabric I didn't have. It was hard to use at first, but I got better, and the software has gotten easier with each new version. Of course, today, I use it a lot. Today I'm sharing how EQ8 helps my business.
Every quilt that I have designed for magazines and many I have made on the blog started in EQ8. I can import fabrics from manufacturers to generate mock-ups that are close to what the finished quilt will look like. I don't know how to properly scale the designs, so mostly I just get color placements. I will confess that I rarely take the time to do any of the many, many free lessons on the EQ website. The ones that I have looked at are fantastic.
Once I have a design I like, I write it up and send it off to a magazine. Writing it up entails looking at block sizes, quilt size, and fabric requirements, taking a screen shot of the quilt image, and writing up a blurb that will convince the magazine to hire me.
This is a design that I worked on last year for submission to Quiltmaker magazine. I used Pietra by Giucy Giuce - don't you love these soft colors? I'm usually a bright color girl, but these ones just made me happy, as most of GG's fabric does. I think the prompt was something about making a traditional block more modern. I took Birds in the Air and changed the half square triangles into 1/4 circles. I call it Gulls in the Air.
One thing I try to do when I design is make sure I have the tools and skills I need before I submit a quilt. EQ8 makes it really easy to just go wild and use my imagination, but nothing sucks more than trying to figure out how to do something new and do it well on a deadline. I've done that to myself once, and I won't be doing it again. So, these blocks were all designed to use the 1/4 circle template set I have from Betty Crocker Ass.
Unfortunately, supply chain issues now mean that getting fabrics that will be current when a magazine goes to print is a huge challenge. Back when I pitched and got accepted, the manufacturer hadn't yet received their sampling fabric. I could have changed collections, but in my heart, this quilt was meant to be with these fabrics. So I waited. And I waited. And I received the fabric the week before the quilt was due to be shipped. It's a good thing I like adrenaline.
Once the quilt was finished, I took one picture, then bundled it up and shipped it off. Then I forgot it existed. Seriously. I got a couple of other quilts back, and I'd have a little feeling like I was forgetting something, but couldn't think of what it was. When the sample magazines showed up last month I was startled. That was two days before we left for our vacation. I wasn't even home when the quilt got back, so I can't take my usual "open magazine on the quilt" picture.
So this is just one way that EQ8 works for me. Another is when I design for AccuQuilt. I am able to easily create mock-ups of different blocks using Lori Miller's block libraries. She has a bunch of collections, but the BOB's are my favorites, because they are the hardest to draw. I really like to be able to pull up a couple of BOB's and put them together and see what they do. Do they create a secondary design? Just looking at photos on the AccuQuilt website will give me ideas, but EQ8 will let me play with them without having the dies in my studio, and without cutting out my fabric.
Just this month Lori had me look at a lesson how how to do layouts using pieced hexagons. That was something I had tried doing last year and I couldn't figure it out. Then Lori comes along with a really easy to follow lesson, and 15 minutes later I can do this.