The past few days QuiltShopGal has shared insights about a beautiful new fabric collection “My Sunflower Garden” by Jane Shasky for Henry Glass & Co., new Slit N Sew Templates from Quilter’s Paradise and I acknowledged that I used EQ8 software to design this quilt.
Today, I want to share insights on how I used EQ8 software to incorporate the 60 degree diamond patches, as well as frame the panel blocks. I also want to challenge all EQ users to do this exercise, adopting my perspective of “15 minutes of EQ Playtime every day”.
It was honestly super easy to design in EQ8 software, as well as fun to design. It is also easy to plan out pieced quilt backs in EQ8 software, to optimize your fabric pieces that you want to use in your back, or with the goal of creating a particular design on the back of your quilts! BTW – I did use EQ8 to design a backing for this quilt, which also incorporated left over fabric from this fabric collection, including some of the panel blocks, as well as various blues from my fabric stash.
The 60 degree diamonds basically have a height of 9″ and width of 5″. Keeping that in mind, I decided to create a quilt that is basically 60″ x 72″, with three different blocks.
Blocks:
I hope to inspire ALL EQ users (EQ8, EQ7, EQ6, etc) to play with their EQ software for 15 minutes a day. You’ll be surprised how much you will learn in no time at all, as well as how much fun you’ll have. So, I hope this “quickie” tutorial will be one that will help you design quilts for 60 degree triangles, as well as learn to design Custom Quilts.
Let’s start playing with EQ8 for 15 minutes. Game on! If you have any problems, questions, feedback feel free to email me or leave a comment. I will try to assist you, as well as update this tutorial, as appropriate, based on your feedback.
STEP 1 – Open EQ8 software and create new project
On the MENU BAR click FILE > NEW PROJECT
The PROJECT HELPER Menu will appear. In the CREATE NEW PROJECT tab, type the name of your project. For this tutorial, we will call it “EQ Diamond Quilt Tutorial”. Then click “OK”.
STEP 2 – Design Our Blocks
Click on the “BLOCK WORKTABLE”
Click on NEW BLOCK PIECED
Select the BLOCK STYLE – EASY DRAW
Click on DRAW and set the block width 20″ and height 9″
Click on the LINE TOOL as we are going to draw our diamond patches.
Remember the 60 degree diamond patches are approximately 5″ wide and 9″ high. We will use our worktable rulers to draw these patches on our block. This will allow us to place 4 diamond patches in a row within this block, with half diamond patches on top and bottom and 1/4 patches on the left and right side of the block.
We draw the line using our mouse to click, hold, drag release from point to point of the line we want to draw. We can use the EDIT tool to make changes.
The Zoom tools will allow you to zoom in (and out) to check that the lines you drew are connected. You can’t color your patch with fabric if you don’t connect all of your lines:
To clarify, if your lines do not connect click on the EDIT tool and then click on the line you want to edit where you can simply click, hold, drag release a node at the end of your line to move it to where you want it.
Once you have all the patches of your block drawn, Click on the COLOR tab, then the SELECT tool and click on a FABRIC swatch, to select it. You can now click on any swatch in your block to paint it with your choice of fabric (or color).
Repeat the selection of fabric and clicking on the patches, till you have your block colored the way you desire.
Click the Add to SKETCHBOOK tool to save this block.
We are now ready to create a similar, but larger block, using the same steps that you did for the first one. Hint: New Block. But the size for this larger block will be 20″ x 18″.
Be sure to save the larger block to your sketchbook. Now we’ll create our 3rd and final block.
Click on the NEW BLOCK > PIECED > EASY DRAW.
Set the block size to 20″ x 18″
For this block, we are adding “coping strips” to our panel blocks, to create a patch that is going to be 10″ wide x 9″ high. Sewing wise, we basically do that by measuring the size of our panel squares and and then adding strips to all four sides, to upsize the panel block to be out 10″x 9″ (finished) patch. For EQ design purposes, I just left the panel patch as a 10″x9″ patch for this block.
Color your patches, as we did for the other two blocks earlier in this tutorial. Remember to save your block to your Sketchbook.
We now have all three of our blocks designed and are ready to create our Custom Quilt design. Easy Peasy? How is the 15 minutes/day “playtime” in EQ working for you? Don’t forget you can stop/start again anytime, as well as repeat from the beginning, as often as you wish. I’ll often do this when I’m learning software to help embed on the steps in my mushy brain so it truly sinks in for future recall on other projects.
STEP 3- Create the Custom Quilt
Click on the QUILT WORKTABLE button.
Click NEW QUILT and on the CUSTOM set button. If you do not see the Custom Set button use the double arrows, on the right to get more options to appear and you will see this button.
Click on the LAYUOT tab and we will change our default settings to create a custom layout of 60″ x 72″.
Click on the BORDERS tab.
Click on the DESIGN button
In the Blocks Tool menu, Click the SET BLOCK tool.
On the bottom of the Sketchbook blocks menu, the defaul BLOCKS (not Motifs or Stencils) should already be selected. If not select BLOCKS. Then use the scroll bar, at the bottom of this menu, to view all the blocks that are currently available to you. You’ll need to find the three blocks we designed in this lesson and one at a time, select it with your mouse.
Using your mouse, LEFT CLICK, HOLD, DRAG AND RELEASE this block on top of your quilt layout. Repeat to select your other two blocks and place them on your quilt Layout.
Now we want to move our blocks into the desired placement for our custom quilt.
Click the ADJUST tool then click, hold, drag, release a block to the desired place.
To replicate a block, there are several ways to do it, but I like to simply click on a block that I want to replicate and press my CTL C (copy) and CTL V to paste. Then I drag the copied block to the next location. It is easy to repeat these steps to get your desired custom quilt layout. And, soon, you’ll have your design set.
For this particular quilt, this is now a perfect time to play with your Fabric/Color selection as our design of blocks did not take into consideration of placement where some of the diamonds will be created by two half diamond shapes vs a single diamond.
To recolor you quilt patches while in Quilt Layout mode, it is pretty similar to coloring patches in block mode.
Click FABRIC tools > PAINTBRUSH > the fabric/color you want to paint on your quilt, by clicking a specific patch, within a block.
Don’t forget to save your quilt layout to your sketchbook and save your EQ8 design file.
Click the “ADD TO SKETCHBOOK” button.
Congratulations, you have now designed a Custom Quilt in EQ8! Easy Peasy.
Don’t forget that you can start/stop/repeat EQ tutorials anytime. I hope you’ll adopt my “15 minutes of daily playtime with EQ”, as you will be amazed how much fun you’ll have and how fast you’ll learn.
If you have any problems, kindly send me an email and I’ll try to help you, as well as update this tutorial to help make the steps easier to follow.
Lastly, remember this EQ8 tutorial was intended to help others learn about the custom layout. In my scenario, I was also planning on cuttting all my fabric patches using the new Slit N Sew templates by Quilters Paradise. EQ8 software helped me design a custom quilt layout, plan fabric requirements and was simply fun to play and design with.
QuiltShopGal 
I need to upgrade to EQ8… but after having EQ7 on my machine since April 2010 and never really even opening it until April 2018… I may have some time yet!!!
I might pop back for your lesson when I do upgrade!
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A very comprehensive tutorial 🙂 I really need to adopt 15 mins per day as I haven’t opened EQ8 for a while. Making time is the hardest thing to do! Maybe my first day can be to play with your tutorial!
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Oh now I see it, the first time the page loaded, the top picture didn’t load…. 🙂 Looks great!!
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As a new EQ8 quilter, I found your tutorial very helpful. I wonder if you might have suggestions about the use of panel blocks? I want to use panels that will be cut apart and used separately in the quilt top, but as a new user I am having trouble creating the top I want. Granted, I don’t even have my manual as yet. Hope the manual and extras I ordered will help.
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