Swath Tool
This tool is found on the Appliqué tab in the Block Worktable.  Here’s how it works.  You draw a path…

and then EQ7 fills in the path with either diamonds…

or flying geese!  Pretty cool, right?

I read an article about curved flying geese that stated they were quite easy to construct using paper foundation piecing.  Paper foundations are available from the Print Menu, so I checked to see how EQ7 would handle this curved flying geese unit.  Beautiful!

Serendipity Tools
These tools are found in the Block Menu.  EQ6 included three serendipity tools (which I may have noticed before, but just forgot):  Frame Block, Tilt Block, and Merge Blocks.  EQ7 adds four more and they’re pretty fun.

Click & Flip Blocks
This tool takes the top left corner of a block and flips it around to create new combinations.  Watch what it does with this Maltese Cross block.

Shrink & Flip Blocks
This tool shrinks a block to one quarter and uses that to create new combinations.  Here’s what happens with an Hourglass block.

Kaleidoscope Blocks
This one is very cool.  It uses a triangular portion of a block to create new combinations.  Here’s our Maltese Cross block again, followed by an Orange Peel block.  Amazing!

Fancy Star Blocks
This tool fits a block into a diamond shape, and uses those diamonds to create a star.  You can choose how many points in the star – between 5 and 10.  Here are the same two blocks in an eight-pointed star.

There’s a lot more to see and do in EQ7 – these are just a few highlights.  If you would like to learn how to use this amazing quilt design software, watch for my fall schedule and two EQ7 classes coming soon.

The first thing you’ll probably notice when you open EQ7 is a new worktable.  In EQ6, we had two worktables:  one for working on blocks and one for working on quilts.  In EQ7, there is now a third worktable for working on images.

EQ6 Two Worktables

EQ7 Three Worktables

What can you do on the image worktable?  Tons of stuff!  EQ7 offers the kind of image editing capabilities you find in programs such as Corel Photo-Paint and Adobe Photoshop Elements.  (See my previous articles on Printing Fabric, Part 2 and Part 4.)  You can crop, resize, and rotate.  You can adjust the colors, automatically or using the many color tools.  You can apply a wide variety of special effects. 

You can also create fabulous kaleidoscopes from your images using the circular or square symmetry tools.  This reminds me of the Kaleidoscope Kreator software I mentioned in a previous article.  All your image editing can be done within EQ7 and saved to your Sketchbook, ready to use in a quilt design.  So let’s try it.  Here’s a photo of a morning glory:

Let’s apply a square symmetry…

and change the photo into this:

Next, we’ll set the image in a quilt…

and start adding borders.  Now here’s something really neat:  the Eyedropper tool can find a matching color or a matching fabric from a color in the photo!  Isn’t that cool?

Here are a few quilt designs:

There’s one more amazing thing I have to show you.  It’s a new quilt layout called Photo Patchwork.  Here’s the morning glory photo overlaid with a square patchwork grid.

The grid doesn’t show up very well in the illustration, but watch this.  EQ7 will fill in each square with solid colors…

or with matching fabrics!

How cool is that?!  There are still more great new features in EQ7 I’d like to tell you about, but I guess they’ll have to wait until next week.  If you haven’t ordered EQ7 or your EQ7 upgrade yet, what are you waiting for?

If you are like me, you may have thought of Facebook as something for teenagers.  But then I started to notice businesses – quilt shops, magazines, publishers – adding links to Facebook on their websites.  That’s when I discovered Facebook Pages.

A Facebook Page is a public profile for sharing a business or product with Facebook users.  Because users are connected with their friends, when they interact with a Facebook Page, they spread the word to a wider circle of people.  But even visitors without a Facebook account can view the content of the Page.

My Facebook Page, called Kathy K. Wylie Quilts, was published just a few days ago.  So far, I have created three photo albums.  Sewflakes Quilts features twelve quilts designed with the Sewflakes: Papercut Appliqué technique.  The other albums display Award Winners or quilt designs with Patterns Available.

The Wall tab displays a running commentary of all the activity on the Page, including any new posts on the blog or on Twitter.  Facebook users can also add their comments or select things they like without leaving a comment.

It will be interesting to see how the Page evolves over time.  I will say, however, that all of the content will pertain to quilts or quilting.  I hope you will visit, add your comments, and share it with your friends!

Well, take this fruit fabric as an example.  Suppose I wanted to use it as part of a quilt label. 

Instead of sewing a border onto my label, I could scan the fabric and print it all in one.

Or, I could apply an effect called transparency.  I could continue to lighten the fabric until text would be visible on it.

This effect works really well if you want to use the same fabric as the quilt backing for your label.

Once our fabric is scanned, we can apply image editing tricks to it as well.  Take this animal fabric, for instance.

We could isolate the chicken…

We could turn him to face in the other direction…

We could turn him pink!

We could make him tall and skinny…

Or short and squat…

And we could put them all together in a funky chicken nine-patch block!

And these are just a few ideas of what you could do.

Calendars
Don’t you always keep your old Lang or Pine Ridge Art calendars, because the pictures are too beautiful to throw away?  This image, by Sam Timm, was featured in October 2004.

Here it is, scanned and printed to fabric, and then thread painted.

Wallpaper
This is the wallpaper in my diningroom.

I could scan the wallpaper border and print it to fabric…

and then make a table runner for my diningroom table.

Scrapbooking Paper
When I first encountered scrapbooking paper, it reminded me of fabric!  Why not turn it into fabric?

This wall quilt features the scrapbooking paper scanned and printed to fabric.

Check out this image of a barn in a field of sunflowers:

Here are just a few examples of ways the photograph can be manipulated.  I used CorelDraw to create these special effects.

And here’s a Flying Geese block done with fabric printed with this last special effect.

These next effects were created using software called Kaleidoscope Kreator.  This software has many applications, but once again, with the ability to print to fabric, these extraordinary kaleidoscopes would make amazing quilt blocks.

Here’s an eight-pointed star kaleidoscope, printed to fabric and appliquéd onto a background fabric.

I guess the first obvious conclusion is that you can use your computer to custom dye small quantities of fabric.  And it doesn’t have to be a solid color.  You could add a motif:

Or, you could add a pattern, just like a print fabric.

You could add texture and create fabric that looks like batik.

Here’s a block made with a real batik and this computer-generated textured fabric.

You could also gradate the color.  This example gradually changes color from white through to magenta.

And here’s a quilt block featuring the computer dyed fabric in the center patch.

Whatever you can create on your computer screen, you can print to fabric.  All of these examples were done using CorelDraw software.  But even if you don’t have this kind of software, there are lots of options available on the internet.

This is computer wallpaper, intended to be used as a background for your computer screen.  But I think it would make amazing fabric, don’t you?

This PowerPoint background would also make lovely fabric.

Here it is in a snowball block with other snowflake fabric.

These are just a few ideas of how you could use your ink-jet printer to custom dye small quantities of fabric.  Stay tuned for part 2 and more options for printing fabric.

Husqvarna Viking had issued a call for entry and the competition theme was “Color, Couleur, Colore, Kulör!”.  I had the idea to create a color wheel using hexagon-shaped patches, but wondered how I would ever manage to collect enough fabric to make each hexagon a slightly different hue.

I knew how to mix color on the computer.  The three primary colors in digital printing are cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY).  Shown at full strength, these colors are produced by entering a value of 100, i.e. C100 is 100% cyan.

Primary Colors

I could use increments of each shade, from light to full strength, and add black to shade to dark.  An entry of 10 produces a light value of cyan (C10), 50 creates a medium value (C50), and adding 50% black (K50) shades full-strength cyan.

Shading Colors

I could mix colors together to produce secondary colors.  Cyan plus magenta creates a dark blue-violet color.  Magenta with yellow is a reddish-orange.  Cyan plus yellow produces a hue of green.

Secondary Colors

Creating colors on the computer is interesting, but how could it help me with this quilt? 

I knew I could print onto fabric.  I had tried a number of products over the years, but I particularly liked Bubble Jet Set by C. Jenkins Company.  Even better, they had just announced Miracle Fabric Sheets, 8½” x 11″ sheets of fabric already pre-treated for printing and backed with freezer paper.

This seemed like the ideal solution.  I could print the unique color formula for each hexagon patch onto the fabric sheets.  Then I could cut out the patches and prepare them for English paper piecing, which I did on my sewing machine.

Printing onto Fabric

Cutting & Basting

Sewing Hexagon Pairs by Machine

Sewing Rows of Hexagons by Machine

By using this process, I was able to create a quilt with a white hexagon in the center that radiated out to black at the edges.  The six edges of the white hexagon form six lines, three with the primary colors of cyan, magenta and yellow, and three with the secondary colors formed by mixing the primary colors together.  In between is every possible combination of blending those hues.

I called the resulting quilt “Trinity”, in recognition of the original three colors at the foundation of the design.