Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup - February 2020

Welcome to February's Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup!

My favorite finish for February was teaching 7 classes at QuiltCon.  It was a lot of teaching, but I had a great time meeting all of the students and seeing the show.

Photo by Melanie Meyer @Mellmeyer of the Subtracting for Minimalism class

Ready for the party?  

Here is a reminder of the party details:

• The linky party will open at 12:01am EST on the last day of the month and will be open for 5 days, through the 4th at 11:59 pm EST.

• For instructions on how to link up blog, Instagram, or pictures from your computer (new - there is now a way to just upload a picture without a web link) to the party, click here.  

• If linking a blog post, I ask that you please add a link back to the party (and the button graphic if you would like).

• Please visit at least 3 other links (and preferably leave comments) to share the love and celebration :)

I hope you join in by checking out the posts or linking your favorite finish of the month!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

EQ8 ++ Importing Fabric Series ++ Post 3

I hope that you are finding this series about importing fabrics into EQ8 helpful.  So far we can covered importing fabrics from Electric Quilt and from fabric manufacturers' websites. 

Here are the posts that will be in the Importing Fabrics into EQ8 blog series, that will be posted each Wednesday:

• Post 1 - Importing fabrics from Electric Quilt into EQ8 
• Post 2 - Importing fabrics from fabric manufacturer sites into EQ8 
• Post 3 - Importing fabrics from other sources into EQ8 ← this post
• Post 4 - Resizing and cropping fabrics in EQ8 to correct fabric print scale
• Post 5 - Adding fabrics to "My Library" for future use

Importing Fabric Swatches from Other Sources

If you purchased a fabric that is not available as a download as part of an EQ bundle or from a fabrioc manufacturer that has full collection downloads there are still other options to get the fabrics into EQ8.

Using these techniques, the biggest downside will be that the images are typically not scaled correctly for EQ8, meaning that a design from the fabric will appear larger or smaller in the rendered quilt top in EQ8.

For example, a flower that measures 5" in real life on a fabric may show up as measuring only 1-2" in EQ8.  In Post 4 of this series, we will learn how to quickly crop and resize fabric images to fix this issue.

The most important thing to remember when downloading individual files is to remember where you saved them on the computer and to make sure you keep them organized.


Individual Images

You can download individual images off the web from where you purchased the fabric (Ebay, Etsy, etc) by right clicking on the image and saving it to your hard drive. 

Be sure that these images are for your own personal use, I would not post these images or the quilts rendered using them on the internet, patterns, etc. due to copyright laws.

Scanned Images

If you have a flat bed scanner, you can scan your fabric directly.


Digital Photographs 

You can take a picture of your fabric and then download the image onto your hard drive.  This is the least preferred method because slight lighting differences across the fabric become very visible when the fabric image is tiled in a quilt top rendering.

How to Add Downloaded Fabrics into your EQ8 Fabric Library

1.  Open your fabric library.  At the bottom of the window click the Import Fabrics → From Image Files.  Navigate to where on the hard drive the images are stored, select the images you wish to add, and press Open.  This sometimes takes a few minutes due to the size of the files.

2.  Select the images in the window (there is a Select All Fabrics button) and then click Add to Sketchbook.  You will have to add the fabrics to each new project you start.  Post 5 in this series will cover adding fabrics to your library so they are available for every project.

Next Wednesday, in part 4, we will learn how to resize and scale our fabric images.

The Electric Quilt Company is generously offering a special coupon code for my readers.  Use can use EQ8CHERYL for 20% off of their entire website, ElectricQuilt.com (EQ8, EQ8 upgrades, books, add-ons, etc.). The code is good until March 31, 2020.

Camden Road QAL ++ Week 4

This is officially week 4 for the Camden Road Quilt Along! You still have plenty of time to work on your quilt tops / quilts with the quilt parade and prizes on Tuesday March 24th.

Find out all of the other details about the quilt along here and see everyone's progress on #CamdenRoadQAL.

I have fallen a bit behind in the quilt along due to the preparation for teaching at QuiltCon and then attending the conference.  I have all of the flying geese finished but still need to start assembling the blocks.  It is good that we have another full month to work on the quilts :)

Here is a picture of the flying geese in progress, I love to make blocks assembly line style.

Mosaic Mystery Quilt ++ Reminder to Linkup

Reminder - Linkups of all quilt tops and/or quilts are due by midnight March 5th (EST) into the Mosaic Mystery Quilt linkup to be eligible for reveal parade prizes.

Click here to enter your quilt top and/or quilt into the linky party

If you linked up your quilt top/finished quilt as part of the January linky party, there is no need to link again (it is the same party).

EQ8 ++ Importing Fabric Series ++ Post 2

In the first post of this series, we learned how to download fabric swatches from www.ElectricQuilt.com to add to our EQ8 fabric library.  In post 2 today, we are going to explore how to download swatches of full fabric collections from manufactures' websites.

Just a reminder, here are the posts that will be in the Importing Fabrics into EQ8 blog series, that will be posted each Wednesday:

• Post 1 - Importing fabrics from Electric Quilt into EQ8 
• Post 2 - Importing fabrics from fabric manufacturer sites into EQ8 ← this post
• Post 3 - Importing fabrics from other sources into EQ8
• Post 4 - Resizing and cropping fabrics in EQ8 to correct fabric print scale
• Post 5 - Adding fabrics to "My Library" for future use

Importing Fabric Swatches from Fabric Manufacturer Websites

More and more fabric manufacturers are making it easy to download fabric images of entire collections so that quilters can play with the fabrics in their new designs.  Below are the four manufacturers that I know currently offer swatch downloads.

The biggest downside to these images from the manufacturers is that they are typically not scaled correctly for EQ8, meaning that a design from the fabric will appear larger or smaller in the rendered quilt top in EQ8. 

For example, a flower that measures 5" in real life on a fabric may show up as measuring only 1-2" in EQ8.  In Post 4 of this series, we will learn how to quickly crop and resize fabric images to fix this issue.


Moda Fabrics

Go to the www.ModaFabrics.com and under "Inspiration + Resources" click "Fabric Downloads".  You can search the available collections by name, designer, etc and Moda has collections available form a few years back to collections that have not launched yet. 

Art Gallery Fabrics

Go to the http://www.artgalleryfabrics.com/ website and navigate to the fabric collection you are interested in.  There will be a button to download jpeg swatches.

Andover Fabrics

Go to https://andoverfabrics.com/ and navigate to the collection you are interested in.  There will be a tab at the top of the page called "Quilts and Downloads".  In that tab there will be a button to download the images.

Northcott

Go to http://www.northcott.net/ and navigate to the collection you are interested in.  For most collections, there is a gray "Download Fabric Files" button on the right hand of the screen.

Saving Your Files

Most of the fabric collection images will be downloaded as .zip files due to their size.  Unzip the files and save them into a folder on your computer.  I have a folder named "Fabrics" and within this folder have sub-folders for each collection to keep them organized and easy to find.


How to Add Downloaded Fabrics into your EQ8 Fabric Library

1.  Open your fabric library.  At the bottom of the window click the Import Fabrics → From Image Files.  Navigate to where on the hard drive the images are stored, select the images you wish to add, and press Open.  This sometimes takes a few minutes due to the size of the files.

2.  Select the images in the window (there is a Select All Fabrics button) and then click Add to Sketchbook.  You will have to add the fabrics to each new project you start.  Post 5 in this series will cover adding fabrics to your library so they are available for every project.

If you know of additional manufacturers offering downloads, please let me know in the comments below.  Next Wednesday, in part 3, we will learn how to download fabric swatches when full collection downloads are not available.

The Electric Quilt Company is generously offering a special coupon code for my readers.  Use can use EQ8CHERYL for 20% off of their entire website, ElectricQuilt.com (EQ8, EQ8 upgrades, books, add-ons, etc.). The code is good until March 31, 2020.

Camden Road QAL ++ Week 3

For the Camden Road quilt-along this week, my co-host Cindy of Hyacinth Quilt Designs is posting instructions about a little modification she is making to her quilt.  She is adding a border around the blocks and extending the first and second backgrounds into the border.  Hop over to her blog to check it out.

Illustration by Cindy of Hyacinth Quilt Designs

Find out all about the quilt along here and see everyone's progress on #CamdenRoadQAL.

February EQ8 Block Spotlight

Did you know that each month Electric Quilt highlights a block from the EQ8 Block Library? They share a few ideas on how you could use the block in a unique way in a quilt top then asks EQ users to play and show what they can do with the block.

This month's block is the Flower Wreath and you can find it on EQ's blog here. You can link up your design and see everyone else's on the blog page too.

I have never seen the Flower Wreath in EQ8 (there are so many blocks!) and I really like it.  Here are three quilts I made with the Flower Wreath block...

1. On-Point Layout

I used the On-Point layout to turn the blocks 45 degrees and then only added the Flower Weave to certain blocks, leaving some as plain blocks.  I think that this spaces the blocks out well and avoids the design from looking too busy.

2. Serendipity - Kaleidoscope

I am getting ready to teach EQ8 at QuiltCon later this week and one of the classes is all about using the Serendipity functions to create new blocks.  I decided to use the Serendipity Kaleidoscope function to create an intricate main block and surrounded it with some borders for a wall sized quilt.  Is't it awesome how the block is transformed using the Serendipity function?

3. Serendipity - Fancy Star

For the last design I used the Serendipity function Fancy Star.  I chose to make the star as large as possible and have 8 points.  I really like how the star almost looks woven.  I added a border around the star using the original Flower Weave block.

Which is your favorite design? Have you ever played with and submitted a design in the EQ8 Block Spotlight?

The Electric Quilt Company is generously offering a special coupon code for my readers.  Use can use EQ8CHERYL for 20% off of their entire website, ElectricQuilt.com (EQ8, EQ8 upgrades, books, add-ons, etc.). The code is good until March 31, 2020.

EQ8 ++ Importing Fabric Series ++ Post 1

I am so happy to hear that quilter's are enjoying my EQ8 tips and tricks posts.  I asked for suggestions on what you wanted to learn and I heard from multiple quilters that they would like to know more about how to import fabrics into EQ8.

The topic is a bit too much for a single post so I will be posting a series on importing fabrics into EQ8.  The blog series will post every Wednesday and will include the following topics:

• Post 1 - Importing fabrics from Electric Quilt into EQ8 ← this post
• Post 2 - Importing fabrics from fabric manufacturer sites into EQ8
• Post 3 - Importing fabrics from other sources into EQ8
• Post 4 - Resizing and cropping fabrics in EQ8 to correct fabric print scale
• Post 5 - Adding fabrics to "My Library" for future use

Today we will be handling the first topic:

Importing fabrics from Electric Quilt into EQ8

Importing fabric swatches directly from Electric Quilt is the easiest and best way (in my opinion) of getting correctly scaled, fabric images with good color representation.

Electric Quilt offers a free monthly set of fabric swatches to download (previous months are also available) and large EQ Stash bundles for purchase.

To find and install the free monthly fabric sets:

1. In your internet browser, go to www.ElectricQuilt.com.  Under the Electric Quilt logo, select Free Downloads and then Free Fabric Downloads.

2. This brings up the Do You EQ? page with the free fabrics of the month.  The current month is at the top and previous month's sets are below.  Click the download button and select PC or MAC.

3.  On a PC, once the .exe is finished downloading, you can begin the installation of the fabrics.  Clicking the .exe will launch a window similar to installation windows for other applications.

4.  Once the fabric of the month file is installed it will automatically show up in your Fabric Library so these fabrics will be available for every project in EQ8, there is no need to reload them for each project.  This is a great advantage compared to importing fabric swatches from the sources.  Additionally, the fabric on the swatches are scaled correctly so the designs will show up as the correct size in your quilt.

You can find the February fabrics:  EQ Libraries → 2020 Fabric of Month → 02 Moda-Mackinac Island → Mackinac Island by Minick & Simpson

To find and install the EQ Stash fabric bundles:

1.  In the middle of the the main www.ElectricQuilt.com page, there is a button to shop for EQ8 Add-ons.

2.  This will bring up different EQ Stash downloads organized by year.  Each bundle is $7.95 (but you can use EQ8CHERYL for 20% off through March 31, 2020) for 1,100+ fabric swatches in each bundle.

I hope you try downloading a free monthly fabric set and EQ Stash bundle from Electric Quilt!  For the next blog post, I will be showing you some different places fabric swatches can be downloaded and how they can be used.

The Electric Quilt Company is generously offering a special coupon code for my readers.  Use can use EQ8CHERYL for 20% off of their entire website, ElectricQuilt.com (EQ8, EQ8 upgrades, books, add-ons, etc.). The code is good until March 31, 2020.

Camden Road QAL ++ Week 2

I am starting to see some great fabric combinations and Camden Road blocks on social media, I love quilting along with everyone!

This week, I want to show how great the no-waste flying geese method is for directional prints.  By just following the method, the directional print will be preserved and the flying geese can be assembled into the quilt top with the directional prints all facing the same direction. 

Here is a directional text print to illustrate:

Find out all about the quilt along here and see everyone's progress on #CamdenRoadQAL.

Camden Road QAL ++ Week 1

We are one week into the Camden Road Quilt Along, do you have your fabrics picked out and have you started cutting or piecing your blocks?

For this week's post, hop over to my co-host Cindy's blog Hyacinth Quilt Designs for some tips on cutting and pairing fabrics.

Find out all about the quilt along and see everyone's progress on #CamdenRoadQAL.