Day 3: AQ/EQ Challenge blog hop - Designing quilts in EQ7 for Valentines Day

I'm having fun and learning tips and design ideas for using EQ to create designs to make beautiful quilts using AccuQuilt dies. And we are only mid mid-week into this Blog Hop.

Here is a recap of the week so far:
- Monday, SewCalGal (where you are now) shared insights on some simple designs that I entered into this challenge. I had fun creating in EQ7 by looking at various AccuQuilt dies and coming up with design ideas.

Yesterday, Marjorie (Marjorie's Quilting Bee) shared insights on how you can plan how many pieces to cut with your AccuQuilt by taking time to layout your quilt design in EQ, along with more great insights.  Marjorie also has shared many insight on using EQ to create wonderful designs using AccuQuilt dies, that you can find on her blog this week, as well as even in older posts. She is a wealth of inspiration and information.

Today (Wednesday), Kim (Chatterbox Quilts)will be sharing insights about designs she submitted in the AccuQuilt/Electric Quilt Challenge, as well sharing insights on using EQ to help create designs for AccuQuilt products.  Like Marjorie, Kim has also been sharing wonderful tips this week, and has a wealth of great insights in her older posts that you can find on her blog.

Tomorrow (Thursday) Judy (jdqltr's Sewabout Quilting) will be sharing insights on her winning entry in the AccuQuilt/Electric Quilt Challenge.  Judy has also created many wonderful designs using EQ and AccuQuilt products and has many great tutorials on her blog.

I do hope you are having fun visiting Marjorie, Kim & Judy's blogs this week. I certainly have enjoyed all the insights that they generously share.

Today, I've been playing with EQ to create a layout using AccuQuilt dies to make a Valentine's theme project.  I'm still in the early stages of planning, but I thought I'd share with you how I use EQ to help me plan how to utilize AccuQuilt dies.

AccuQuilt has an excellent free document that shows a variety of blocks that can easily be created using some of the AccuQuilt dies.  This document shows which combination of dies are needed to create a variety of 12" quilt blocks.  Using this as a reference, I used EQ7 to create 12" blocks that I am thinking about including in a quilt. I found it very simple to do too!

In the block mode of EQ7, I simply created a 12" block template and drew lines to create a block that represents the blocks in the AccuQuilt matrix.  And, of course, I had fun playing with colors and fabric.  For my color theme, I'm wanting to use scrappy reds and browns to depict a yummy chocolates and roses.

I enjoyed playing with a variety of AccuQuilts 12" blocks to create a sampler quilt, as well as using one or two blocks to create a more simple design.  It was also so easy to use EQ to rotate the blocks, or place on point.

 

Ok, the possibilities of designing with EQ are endless and I really only spent a few minutes of playtime.  There is no way I could have done this so quickly on paper. 

I will continue to play with EQ to finalize my design, but I wanted to share with you the fun I was having planning this project, and that EQ7 made it so easy.  

I'd love to hear what are you creating for Valentine's Day? 

And, if you have a favorite block in AccuQuilt's Mix & Match block matrix I'd like to hear what your favorite block(s) are.  If you are interested in me writing a tutorial to use EQ to design one or more of these blocks, let me know.