Sunday, January 25, 2009

Designing Quilts on a Computer?

I've offered to teach a series of Electric Quilt 6 classes to quilters from my guild and the surrounding area. Intial interest was really high, among those that know what EQ6 is. But trying to promote the classes has been a challenge. I guess quilting and computer drafting don't readily go together in most quilter's mind.

For the last few weeks I've been building the class content. This is the outline for the first class entitle: Introduction to EQ Easy Draw:

Easy draw: Setting up the drawing canvas: block ratios, graphing, snap to point, snap to node
Draw tools: Select, Edit, Line, Arc, Grid
Additional tools: cloning, rotating, symmetry; partition, stagger
Draw a traditional block.
Edit a block from the block library to create your own
The Sketchbook: Saving to Sketchbook, Viewing Sketchbook, Editing
Why don't all the lines in my block show when I click on the color canvas?
Problem solving 'broken' blocks
Coloring the block, using airbrush to compare colorways
Quilt layout
View yardage
Print options
Creating paperpiecing patterns

Practice: Draw Dove in the Window. What dimensions would you use, what graph and snap to point ratio? Draw the block using diamonds, use clone and rotate. Draw the same block with half square triangles. How is the drawing canvas set up for each?

And that's class one! Class two walks you through Patch Draw and three through Applique' Draw. I hope the participants have as much fun with the class as I've had preparing the content. I'm learning the program to a deeper level, it's cool.

To teach is to learn twice!

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