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Electric Quilt

Electric Quilt software first became available in 1991. It started with EQ1.

As I recall, and you know that I rarely remember anything correctly, EQ3 was a DOS program. I think it came out in about 1995 or 1996. Vine and I got married in 1997 and I remember sitting at my house, talking to him on the phone and trying to get him to help me with EQ3. I was barely able to operate a Windows program and DOS was completely foreign to me.

EQ7 was my favorite of all versions. It may be because I spent more time playing with designs and learned more about the program. There were plenty of nights when I was too tired to quilt but not ready for bed and I’d spend hours “doodling” with EQ. My guess is that maybe 5% of my designs ever made it to a completed design and probably 5% of those were ever made into real quilts.

Towards the end of 2017, EQ released EQ8. I considered buying it but, at the time, as you know, my quilting desire had waned and I wasn’t sure I’d ever quilt again.

Yesterday as I was quilting Blueberry Hill, I had a strong desire to get EQ7 out and play with it. When I went back to the house, I got out my laptop. As I suspected, I didn’t have EQ even loaded on it. I got out my previous notebook and nope, didn’t have EQ on that either. It was on my desktop in the sewing room but there were only a few projects on that one. I clicked over to the EQ website and read about EQ8. I put it in my cart but before I checked out, I told myself . . I had good luck with EQ7, designed lots of quilts, wrote lots of patterns using it. Why would I need EQ8? I talked myself out of buying it. Then I took a nap and the minute I woke up, I knew I needed EQ8 so I got it and then spent most of the evening playing with it.

This quilt has no borders and I’m not saying I’m happy with the design yet . . just sharing the product of my evening of “doodling” in EQ.

Rough Design

I played around a bit more and came up with this:

Another Possibility

Now that one has me wanting to go over and start pulling fabrics. Before I start to think about sewing, I’ll have to come up with border ideas and then get an accurate yardage estimate.

I feel my quilting mojo returning!

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I LOVE the first version, with the white setting off the design! Thank you for sharing this!

  2. Judy, these designs are awesome! I haven’t quite learned to love EQ8 yet as I’m so much faster in EQ7. I just haven’t invested any time yet. I’m so glad to see you’ve got a quilting spark right now.

  4. The mojo is coming. I like the first one too. But both are pretty and very time consuming looking to me.

  6. Love the yellow background but like the darker red in the first one. Both are pretty and make me want to start pulling fabric too!

  7. I wondered if your mojo would return when you decided to sell your long arm. I don’t know where you find time to do all that you do but I imagine you will find even more time to play with quilts.

  8. OK…I’ve had EQ 7 for probably 5 years and I’ve never gotten the hang of it. I’m seriously thinking of selling it, but your design is making me think twice about that. That’s just beautiful!

    • I’ve only used 8 about 12 hours but I’m pretty impressed. It seems way more intuitive than 7 but if you haven’t really used 7, you probably wouldn’t find 8 so easy because it seems, so far, to be an improved version of 8. I haven’t taken the time to read the instructions so I know there’s a lot I’m not seeing yet.

  9. I hope you realize there are a gazillion quilters out here who would be sew excited for your quilt mojo to return … 😉
    But whether it does or not, your stories of life in the harsh Texas climate are always entertaining, exciting, informative, inspiring … sometimes all of those things!

  11. Love the first quilt with the white background……Do hope your quilting mojo comes back……Enjoy retirement…..D.

  12. Finally! I have been waiting for the mojo to return!! I love the first version that you showed..

  13. I hope your quilting mojo comes back. I found your blog through quilting and miss those posts. But I’ve stayed because I love all your posts – family, knitting, garden…

  14. I for one am thrilled on your maybe quilting again. That quilt you made up is pretty. And I’m SURE you have fabrics on shelves to do it. That’s how I first found your blog….the quilts you made. And I am a cat lover. Knitting and cooking….not so much..ha. Do you have a wedding picture of when you and Vince got married? Just wondered.

  15. Love it! I’ve been doodling quilt patterns on graph paper, maybe I need to invest in an EQ program

  17. I love your “doodling”. I wish I could doodle like this! I have EQ8 but haven’t had much of chance to play with it. This might change in August as I am probably going to have some surgery on my foot/ankle and won’t be able to stand, walk, or do anything with my right foot for at least 6 weeks or so. Playing on my laptop might be all I can do.

  18. You go, girl. And then you can go to the Shipshewana Retreat and get THE donuts!

  21. Thank goodness for the return of the quilting mojo. I love design with the yellow and what a beautiful backing that green floral would be.

  22. I like them both, too! The top one especially intrigues me, because I could do it as a r/w/b for American Heroes and parts of each star could be done as leader-enders. It would take me a year or more, but that’s normal around here for one of those special quilts. I’ve never owned a copy of EQ or QuiltPro, or anything since the DOS days when I had a little program I loved but it was on a floppy disk, which tells you how long ago that was!

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