For the Modern Quilt Guild Challenge, we had to use the Riley Blake fabric the Cottage Garden collection in a quilted item, challenging ourselves to make something we never have before. An isosceles triangle quilt has been on my to-do list forever, so I decided that was what I was going to make.
I usually use EQ7 (Electronic Quilt) software to play with different layouts, fabrics, colors, and sizes before setting on a design to make, but I had no clue how to use EQ7 to design a triangle quilt. I dove into the instruction manual (which is awesome by the way) and learned how to design a triangle quilt quickly and easily. I would like to share that knowledge with you today.
To design a triangle quilt in EQ7:
1. Within EQ7, select the tab "Quilt" at the top of the screen, then "New Quilt", then "One Patch Quilt"
2. The new quilt that shows up will automatically default to a hexagon quilt. Now select the tab "Layout" at the bottom of the screen.
3. A One Patch Layout Screen will pop up. Use the pull down menu on Patch style and select Thousand Pyramids. (Note: by changing the patch style you can create other types of one patch quilts such as hexagon, diamond, and tumbler.)
4. Now you just need to play with your dimensions and setting to get the type of triangle and the size quilt you would like. I wanted an isosceles triangle so I set my width and height to be equal. You can change the number of units in the horizontal direction and the vertical direction.
5. Finally, you can design your quilt to have half triangles on the ends of the rows forming straight sides or design your quilt to have full triangles on the ends of the rows for a zigzag edge. The straight side version is what comes up automatically, to get the zigzag sides, select the tab "Borders" at the bottom of the screen and press the Delete button to delete the border.
The design on the left has a border and the design on the right has no border.
I hope that this tutorial was helpful! If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below or e-mail me and I will do my best to answer them.
I am linking up to Tips and Tutorials Tuesday over at the wonderful Late Night Quilter's blog.
Cheryl, this is an awesome EQ7 tutorial. I hope you will do more of these in the future.
ReplyDeleteI've been on the fence about buying this programme now they have it for Mac...I've heard it is not that user-friendly, basically a PC platform on a Mac. You make it look pretty straightforward!
ReplyDeleteYou do make it look so easy!! I have EQ7 and will be referring to this tutorial, thank you! Do you use EQ7 to design all your quilts?
ReplyDeleteVery cool; and a great reason for me to consider upgrading from EQ5 at some point in the future! ;)
ReplyDeleteThe lack of alternative layouts was holding me back on upgrading my EQ. I will be checking into it now for sure. Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this, I have been thinking about playing with a triangle design lately... but I hate EQ7, it is such a terrible program. Why is the majority of quilting software so horrible? I really don't understand how EQ7 has the reputation it does, it must mean that other design software is even worse.
ReplyDeleteTa da! Thanks for the tutorial; it is so helpful!
ReplyDeleteGreat tutorial, Cheryl! Thanks so much for making it look so easy (and triangles so fun). ;o)
ReplyDeleteI never thought to use EQ7 for this - thanks for the tips! Seems faster than Inkscape pulling triangles together!
ReplyDeleteI love EQ7, and mine is on a Mac, I have had very few problems. The people at EQ7 Support are wonderful and have solved every issue promptly. I'd love to see more lessons on this software, thank you for posting!!!
ReplyDeleteWow!! That is so much easier than the way that I tried to do it months ago. I'm going to go back to my project that I completely gave up on designing!!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this tutorial. I am a self taught EQ7 fan. My first granddaughter is due in November. I have been thinking about an isoceles triangle quilt. I enjoy your blog. I have designed about 30 quilts with EQ7. It is fun to see all the varieties of a quilt.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tutorial. Love triangle quilts and haven't tried to draw one up in EQ7 yet.
ReplyDeleteA very good tutorial and I may try playing again with my EQ7 after reading your blog. Thanks so much.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing Cheryl! I'm still very much struggling with getting that program to do what I want, so this is a big help for certain projects.
ReplyDeleteNice tutorial, though I design in Illustrator. Do you do everything in EQ? I recently bought a triangle ruler because I've been wanting to play with some triangle ideas. Hopefully later this summer.
ReplyDeleteOH no! I'm laughing at myself for making my own triangle pattern on EQ with HSTs and here the feature was available all that time. Thanks for the great information Cheryl!
ReplyDeleteI will refer back to this over and over. It's much more fun than wading through the EQ7 manual. Thank you for linking up to Tips and Tutorials Tuesday!
ReplyDeleteIf only an equilateral / 60° triangle were as tall as it is wide ... it's not! The _sides_ of the triangle would be the same. But with EQ7, that's an easy adjustment.
ReplyDeleteGreat tut! Answered a few burning questions I have had!
ReplyDeleteHi Cheryl - Good for you for showing how to use a triangle layout in EQ7! I find that once someone learns how to use EQ they love the program, so hopefully you've opened up that door for some new users.
ReplyDeleteI do have to point out that the triangles you're using here are not equilateral or 60 degree triangles. It's not the height and width that are equal in an equilateral triangle, but the length of all three sides. You have to figure out what the height is by using the Pythagorean theorem. To figure it out, you'll need to draw an imaginary line down the middle of the triangle, to form a right angle triangle. For the purposes of the theory, you'll need the width of the bottom of the right triangle, which is now 1.5" (half of 3"). This is "a" in the theory. Since you know the length of the other sides (3"), using the theory (a-squared (the width of the bottom) + b-squared (the height of the imaginary line) = c-squared (the length of the third side)) it works out to 2.25 + b-squared=9, or b-squared=6.75. B, or the square root of 6.75, is the height. The square root of 6.75 is 2.6 (roughly). If you put that into EQ as the height you'll get as close to an equilateral triangle as possible.
I hope this isn't too confusing. I just didn't want anyone to be confused about how an equilateral triangle works in EQ7.
Whenever I'm figuring out something in EQ, I take the step of printing out a template of one block so that I can actually measure it and make sure it's what I'm looking for.
I have had EQ7 for years and I enjoy it very much. I have been disappointed that there are not more tutorials and classes available. I am self taught so I really appreciate this tutorial. I like to make my class handouts with the graphics from EQ7. I don't understand why the mfg doesn't promote their product more. If you have any more ideas, let us know.
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