What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

The last week has been a cold one.  And for those of us in the Midwest, it is another week before the planned warm-up.  The weather definitely had me looking for my best mittens.

These are made of wool and have kept my hands warm even when cross-country skiing in sub-zero temperature. 

Gloves may be considered more "adult" -- but mittens are definitely warmer.  Mittens are warmer than gloves (made with the same materials) because, unlike with gloves, your fingers can share warmth. Mittens also have less total surface area for body heat to escape.

In much of the country, it is going to be much colder than normal with lots of weather warnings.  Not a lot of snow in MN this year -- but we will get the sub-zero temperatures.  And that is without wind-chill factored it.  On days like that, I love to stay inside with a good quilt to work on and some nice warm liquid to ward off the chill that seems to penetrate even the inside of the house.

I thought it was the perfect opportunity for a new mug rug to use with a favorite cup of tea.

Electric Quilt has a lot of features in the Image Worktable.  Many that aren't regularly used by quilters.  Until today!

My tutorial will share a few of those tools to create works of art. 

And they will all start with a block using EasyDraw with a series of slanted lines.

Earlier this week I was on a live call with my Tech Know Quilter Masters members.  After going through all the pre-submitted questions, we had some extra time.  So we began playing with the Winter Icons font from DaFont.com.

The group collaborated on the process of turning one letter into an applique snowman motif and then created a quilt around the motif.  They were super creative and we were all energized after working together on the project.

Thanksgiving is over.  So it is now time to decorate for Christmas.  For me that means pulling out my Christmas quilts along with a few winter quilts. 

For gift giving, I particularly enjoy creating table runners and smaller wall quilts.  I find recipients appreciate items that focused on a particular season and it is less important to "match" their "current colors" or "decorating style".  It is a great opportunity to experiment with a new fabric collection or even a new "style" of quilt.

The project today will be a fabulous gift option -- in either traditional or non-traditional Christmas fabrics?  I ...

Were you a Black Friday shopper this year?  

This has been an enjoyable weekend with family in Kansas City.  I've been trying to get some Christmas shopping done -- which of course meant braving a few stores on Black Friday.  I am finding that if you wait until mid-afternoon the shopping experience is much less stressful.  However I have been thinking about some more crazy Black Friday experiences

Back in my early-adult years, I remember getting up before the crack of dawn to stand in long lines for particularly enticing Black Friday offers. 

The one I remember best is the ...

Last month I challenged the Tech Know Quilter Masters members to create a harvest themed quilt.  You will definitely want to scroll down and check out their designs.  They are super creative.

I decided to challenge myself to complete a harvest themed quilt myself.  I will walk you through my process and share with you the blocks and quilts in this weeks video tutorial.  

I remember agonizing over my first purchase of Electric Quilt.  I loved quilting and had a ton of patterns and books – more than I could ever use in my lifetime.  Can you relate? 
 
I wasn’t completely convinced I needed the software.  However, I also realized that those purchased patterns were not always accurate and there were quilts that I saw in magazines and at shows that did not have patterns.  And I didn't necessarily want to make an exact replica of the quilts from patterns I had bought.
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Once I started using the software, I knew I couldn ...

Last week I shared my 3 blocks from one concept where I started with an initial candy corn block and then used the block to create the sashing and smaller individual candy corn blocks.  All with no additional drawing required.

If you missed the tutorial, you will want to go back and watch it here.

In last weeks tutorial, I also shared two quilts completed with an on point layout.  However one of the beauties of using Electric Quilt is the ability to play the ...

Last week I shared my 3 blocks from one concept where I started with an initial candy corn block and then used the block to create the sashing and smaller individual candy corn blocks.  All with no additional drawing required.

If you missed the tutorial, you will want to go back and watch it here.

In last weeks tutorial, I also shared two quilts completed with an on point layout.  However one of the beauties of using Electric Quilt is the ability to play the ...

It has been a hectic week.  It has been a privilege to welcome a new group of EQ enthusiasts into Tech Know Quilters.  It was super fun to meet up with some of them at a private help session on Thursday. 

For those that were part of the Fall Migration webinars, your bonus is still a work in progress.  It has been taking a little longer than expected.  But I hope to get it out to you shortly.

In MN, the weather has finally started to feel like fall.  I have my jacket on (huddled over my computer) as I ...

Every month I offer a challenge opportunity to my Tech Know Quilter Masters members.  These are my more advanced students.  The challenges give them an opportunity to expand their Electric Quilt 8 skills -- but more importantly their design skills.  The members have mentioned that I should participate in the challenges as well.

Quilting should be easy.  However, sometimes getting all those points to match up can take the fun out of the quilting process.  So I thought I would create a "no stress" block that is both easy to draft and easy to piece.

The fabric collection I decided to use, is one of the free monthly downloads from DoYouEQ.com.​

The ...

Here is the quilt from the video.

Feel free to draft this quilt in EQ8.  Or bonus points, if you use the block in a different layout.  I would love ...

Each month, I provide a challenge to Tech Know Quilter Masters members.  In July, their challenge was to use a random color generator to generate three colors.  Then to design a quilt using those three fabrics.  The only other color that could be added was a background.  They were also allowed to use "fabrics" to replace the random color.

I decided to challenge myself to complete the challenge and will be sharing my process and quilt in this blog post as well.

Here are the designs submitted by Masters members in ...

When I went to play with rotating and fussy cutting some of the Waters Edge fabric pieces, I quickly realized some ...

Last week I mentioned that I was away at a quilt retreat.  It was so fun catching up with some quilting friends and even getting a bit of quilting done.  Of course not nearly as much as I was planning on.  But I did get the binding on two quilts and borders pieced and added on a third quilt.  I thought those borders would take me 1/2 day -- boy was I wrong.  But I do like how the quilt turned out.