EQ5 and AQA

On Friday, I bought a new computer program, EQ5. I had heard a lot about this, so I have been looking into it for the last couple of weeks and finally got it for myself. I am complete entralled by this! It is a quilt design program and one reason I had been hesitant about buying it is that most of the people I know of who use it design traditional quilts. I don't. I design "art" quilts. My problem has been that I don't like to take the time to draw and design the quilt. I have been trying to go straight from my head to the fabric. This results in frustration, wasted time (which I have very little of) and wasted fabric because something always doesn't quite work. So in this program, I can "draw" a design, try out fabric swatches electronically either from the stash or scanning images of my fabric, and then print templates. Then I can cut out my fabric from the template and fuse away! I am really excited about this and I have high hopes that maybe I can can some of the projects out of my head and into fabric a little more successfully.

Today is also the November meeting for the Art Quilt Alliance. I have to have my challenge project pretty well defined for this meeting, so that is what I will spend the rest of the morning doing. I may not talk much about it today with the group but I will be there with my inspiration piece and some ideas!