It Has Been an EQ Week

I decided to prepare this EQ tutorial to make a custom quilt. I originally designed this quilt back in 2007. I had this Laurel Birch fabric for a couple of years and I just didn’t want to cut the fabric into small pieces. So I did some designing in EQ and this is the results. Unfortunately with one of my computer crashes these files were lost and I decided to re-create it and make a tutorial out of the quilt.

When working on a custom quilt and all the blocks are just plain blocks, I like to set my coloring block preference to one. From File menu go to Preference > Project Properties > General > Block Coloring. I also like to do this if I have multiple colors of any one block. This will make finding the different colorings of the same block a lot easier. I always vote for easy.

 

The next step is to determine the size of your custom quilt.  I strongly suggest that while on the Quilt Worktable you go to the Quilt Menu to Quilt Worktable Options to Layout Options and check the box, “Don’t resize content of layers when resizing quilt”.  This is so if you want to maintain the block size, like 6” square but you have to resize the size of the quilt your blocks will remain 6” square.  Ask me how I know this little step is a great time saver. 

 

 The custom size of this quilt is 46” x 69”.

Another setting that will make your life a lot easier when working on a Custom Quilt is to check these two boxes on the Quilt Worktable Options under snap settings.  It sure makes lining up boxes on the custom quilt a lot easier.  The blocks almost fall or snap right into place. 

Now you have to make some plain blocks in your sketchbook.  Plain just means not pieced.  There are two ways to do this.  The first way is to go the block work table and color the blank block there and then add it to the Sketchbook.    Each time you save it to the Sketchbook you will receive an alert.  Keep blank block in Sketchbook? OK, just click on Yes.

You can also open your Sketchbook and right click in the empty area and add a plain block but then you have to edit it to color it. 

So now all you have to do is add your blocks to your custom quilt layout.

I use the adjust tool and precision bar to help resize and position the blocks.  The Adjust Tool changes the size and postion on the quilt of each block. It activates the blocks so it can be manupulated.

                                                                                             

Precision Bar:  When you read this, it means the top left cornor of the quilt is the zero and zero location.  My highlighted block is at 21” from the top left corner and it is 20” long by 6” high.

As you move across your quilt the location increases by the size of the previous block.  So my highlighted block is 21” from the top left corner and zero inches from the top.  The same math applies as you move down the side of the quilt.  Just keep adding blocks until your top is complete.

This is my original layout but since I had more fabric left over I added another row.  This quilt was made with fat quarters and maybe had a half yard of some of the fabrics.  It came about because I didn’t want to cut the large prints into small pieces.  I tried to enter this design in an EQ Club challenge but my file was too big because of all the scanned fabric.  Here the fabric scanned and saved pretty much to scale.

 

I added borders, since I couldn’t decide which fabric I liked better I used two colors and made 9 Patch blocks for the corner with the colors swapping out locations to give the quilt a little more interest. 

I had a hard with the name of this quilt I started with Mystic Horse, a Tile Quilt, some where along the wa I changed it to Mystical Horses. 

Here is the final quilt!

I hope you try to design a custom set quilt.

Have lot of EQ fun!