Computerized Design

Natalie is having her second baby in June. For most people their initial thoughts are around 'oh, isn't that nice' or 'congratulations!'. However I'm a quilter. My first thought was 'the baby will need a quilt; an excuse to make something!' then it was 'congratulations!'.

Once Natalie found out she was having a girl, I very subtly asked about whether she had decided on the colors for the nursery (since she's a planner like me, I knew she had made a decision). Pale aqua and pink was the answer. Cool! Now I can buy fabric! Any excuse is appreciated, and a new baby is a really good one.

I picked out a cute simple pattern for the quilt. It is Big Love; a tutorial can be found on Modern Handcraft.  It's comprised of half square triangles and a handful of squares. 

Then with an estimation of the amount of fabric I'd need, I headed out to the local quilt shop that was having a 20% off sale. Kismet! Here's what I selected:

  
I bought EQ7 a few months ago and haven't used it much. But I thought that this is such a simple pattern, that it might be a good one to try with the software. It has some videos you can watch to learn certain functions (so of course I watched them all!).

The quilt is 7x6 blocks. Since I have so many  half square triangles, I was able to use this template. I just had to click on it and then paste in the appropriate square.

Here's what the final pattern looks like:

One of the things that drew me to EQ7 is the ability to actually scan my fabric to use in the designs. How cool is that! So that's what I did.  Here's the screen that shows my fabric:

I rearranged some of the darks and lights. I'd like to repeat the fabric colors in a given block at least twice so that I could do some speed piecing.

 
Once I get the squares put together, this should help me arrange them. EQ also helped me get the balance of the colors that I wanted. I think I'll find it saved me time and fabric because I won't have to resew any squares because I didn't make enough of a given combination. (At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!)

Now I get to start cutting the fabric!  Woo hoo! Hopefully I'll have another post in the near future with my quilt top. So stay tuned.