Kathy K. Wylie Quilting » kaleidoscope

More New Features in EQ7

kkwylie — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 03:27:17 +0000

I have a confession to make. As I’ve been investigating EQ7, the latest version of the popular quilt design software from The Electric Quilt Company, I have discovered features in EQ6 I never knew were there. In fact, some of the tools that I was most excited to tell you about have been in EQ6 all along! How embarrassing is that? Never mind, I’m still excited about them and here are some more all new (I’m sure) features to be found in EQ7.

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.

EQ7 is Here!

kkwylie — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:56:07 +0000

I have been using Electric Quilt software since EQ3. With each new version, the good folks at the Electric Quilt Company offer an upgrade option to their existing users at a discounted price. And so, I have dutifully upgraded from version to version until here we are at number 7! I can’t honestly say that I was missing anything in EQ6 or wishing for anything in EQ7, but I was still pretty excited to install my upgrade this past week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of what’s new in EQ7.

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?

Printing Fabric Part 2: Photo Transfer

kkwylie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:25:02 +0000

Photo transfer is another way we can print fabric. Variations of this technology have been around for quite a while, so I’m sure you’re familiar with this idea. But now with photo editing software, we can also come up with some pretty incredible special effects.

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.