Well - after sitting on my shelf for the past 3 - 4 years, I am finally learning how to use EQ5. And the only reason for that is that I'm "helping" a friend of mine to make a quilt for her son. She is a beginner & has picked a variation of a bear paw pattern. I'm actually going thru the lesson book & it's not as bad as I thought it would. Although, I must say that it isn't intuitive (to me anyway). I tried to figure it out without referring to the book, but I'm not clever enough.
So - one thing I have not run across yet is how to find the cutting directions for the whole quilt. This quilt will be made up of the bear paw block. I see the cutting instructions for one bear paw block, but is there anyway to get the directions for the whole quilt - I guess I want to strip cut the fabric & that's what I can't find.
Oh wait - I hate to appear stupid, so I checked once again in the index & found "Setting Quilt Preferences" (for Advanced Users Only- that's not me:)) Is this, ultimately where I need to go? I can ask DH to help me, since I'm not "advanced" & he's smarter than the average bear:) Can someone just confirm this is where I need to be?
i'm still using EQ4. i had no idea what you were talk'n bout so went to have a nosey. EQ4 doesnt seem to have a cutting plan set up. :( oh well. as it works every other way for me, i'll stick with it. besides getting EQ6 here is waaaaay more than i'm prepared to pay for it and then they only give ya a few times to make it work...passwords i guess. my puter seems to crash way too much for my liking on that front so i'm stick'n with what i got now. hope someone has an answer for ya tho. cheers, j.
"Pauline" wrote... Well - after sitting on my shelf for the past 3 - 4 years, I am finally learning how to use EQ5. And the only reason for that is that I'm "helping" a friend of mine to make a quilt for her son. She is a beginner & has picked a variation of a bear paw pattern. I'm actually going thru the lesson book & it's not as bad as I thought it would. Although, I must say that it isn't intuitive (to me anyway). I tried to figure it out without referring to the book, but I'm not clever enough.
So - one thing I have not run across yet is how to find the cutting directions for the whole quilt. This quilt will be made up of the bear paw block. I see the cutting instructions for one bear paw block, but is there anyway to get the directions for the whole quilt - I guess I want to strip cut the fabric & that's what I can't find.
Oh wait - I hate to appear stupid, so I checked once again in the index & found "Setting Quilt Preferences" (for Advanced Users Only- that's not me:)) Is this, ultimately where I need to go? I can ask DH to help me, since I'm not "advanced" & he's smarter than the average bear:) Can someone just confirm this is where I need to be?
Thanks much!
Pauline Northern California
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In EQ6, the yardage, but not cutting details are under print (which I find very bizarre), but I don't think it gives actual instructions - which will depend a lot on personal choice anyway, widthways or lenthways borders for example.
Pauline, there are no such instructions with EQ. There is a yardage estimate, under the "Print" heading, so you can print out how much of each fabric you need. It also tells you how many pieces are cut from each fabric, but not how to cut the whole quilt. And the way the yardage is figured often gives you a really large estimate. Essentially every patch is figured as a square/rectangle. So for half square triangles you get pretty much twice as much yardage estimated as you need,(each triangle has a square "drawn" around it and that is the amount figured as needed. and since you can actually get 2 HST from that square, you end up with double the amount of yardage) and so on. What I do for figuring out strip cutting and so on, is to figure out how many patches I can cut from the width of the fabric. (And I always figure at about 40" because I would rather have a bit too much fabric than not enough) Then I can figure how many strips I need for a particular patch. I do the figuring right on the printed out cutting layout for a particular block. Example, I need to make 12 9-Patch (6 inch finished)blocks for my quilt. At the top of the printed out Rotary cutting page for the block, I write "X 12". Then where the square is "defined" I note that for the "light" square I need 12 x 4 (the number of light squares per block)= 48 and 12 x 5 = 60 for the dark squares. The squares are cut at 2.5". So 40" divided by 2.5 is 16. So I can get
16 squares across a strip. I need about 2 and a half strip for the light squares, and almost 4 strips for the dark squares. I can also figure out the length of the strips for strip piecing, and so on.
EQ is a great design program, but it is not a quilt construction program. So there is some work that you have to do to figure everything out. IF you are unsure about the exact way to put a block together, check the "Foundation piecing" option under Print. The numbering of the block and the foundation units that the program provided can help.
Hope this helps some, and you can get going with the quilt. If you have specific questions, please let me know. Always glad to help out.
Pauline, I don't have any answers that are better than the ones already given, but I can add that there is a lady at EQ who answers the most obscure questions if you contact EQ through the web page. They are very helpful, and I'm sure realize how obtuse their program can be.
Thank you guys - I think I'm finally satisfied that EQ cannot display strip cutting instructions. I know I can figure it out, but I was looking for the quickest way to figure this out. So far, I'm not feeling like this is a very user friendly program. I am trying - but I keep getting stuck in places I don't want to be in. It's late - I'll ask DH to help me later in the week. I start working with it & feel like I'm getting the hang of it & then get stuck in a black hole again. Grrrrr! I'm sure if I didn't feel like I was under the gun, this wouldn't be such a problem, but this is what finally got me off the dime to learn the program.
Thank you so much Pati. You are always such a great resource of information. I'm printing out your email & clipping it to my EQ book. I put together a little mini-retreat to go to Asilomar in January. One of my friends is a new, new quilter & she needs a lot of help to get going. She wants to make her son a UC Berkeley quilt & wants to use the Bear Paw block. We shopped for fabric last weekend & now I need to get her the cutting instructions, so she can have it cut before we go on our retreat. So that's why I'm under the gun to get this figured out - accurately - for her. I'll get there, I just need to be patient with myself:)
I have every incarnation of EQ from 4 to 6, even though I find it a bit frustrating at times. It's really good for visualizing blocks and quilts put together, but that's about all I use it for. That, and to resize common blocks to what I need for a project, so I can easily tell how big to cut the individual patches without doing the math myself. But, as you've found, you do need to do your own math to figure out how many strips to cut. I see that you can now get instructions for pieced side triangles for on-point layouts , which is something I wanted to do a long time ago. I was surprised then that, although the layout would show the pieced side triangle, there were no instructions for cutting. Of course I could figure it out myself, but then what do I have the program for? I guess maybe it's just me, but I always seem to want to do something the program won't do, even though it will do a multitude of other things! I've picked out blocks I liked, but then decided that the construction is just too complicated, needing weird angles cut out with a template, so I end up doing a similar block out of a book that's easier to cut.
But I continue to buy the program because it's fun to play with. It just isn't all that practical for me.
I have either found a flaw in the EQ program or I'm just not smart enough to figure it out!! It would appear that EQ "assumes" you know that when they give you cutting instructions for half-square triangles, you are cutting them using the method of drawing a line diagonally across the block & then sewing 1/4" on either side of the line. Am I correct? I haven't been able to find this instruction anywhere in the book I have, but that would seem to be the method they are using. So - given that that is true, A - they only add 3/8" to the cut square - not 7/8" (& 3/8" works!!!) & B - the instructions tell me to cut 16 of something I only need 8 of. If anyone is interested enough to follow along with me, I'm looking at the Bears Paw block in the EQ Classics library. I just went over to my friends house, who is also a quilting teacher, & "proofed" this for me. I'm very puzzled & wondering if the cutting instructions can be relied upon??? Thank goodness I'm making a test block!
You're right about the cutting sizes. I looked at the Bear Paw block and another block I use a lot. They're saying that your triangle needs to be a certain size to accomodate the diagonal seam allowance, but they don't bother to mention that the *other* half of the square they're telling you to cut, in order to get it, can also be used as another triangle! They seem to consider the other half as "waste" even though it needn't be. I use the method you mention to do half-square triangles whenever I can, which is almost always, so it never seemed odd to me. I only look at the cutting diagrams to check how big to cut each patch, and don't pay attention to how many it says I need (I'm used to figuring that out myself and only trust my own math - usually!). So the fact that they might be telling you to cut double the number needed never occurred to me.
This is probably why the total yardage requirements are off so much. Again, I don't look at that because I heard they were way off and I prefer to do my own calculations anyway. Plus, I don't buy for specific projects, I just collect fabric and use what I have enough of, after I've made an estimate myself.
Re: 3/8" vs 7/8" additional. If you want your half-square triangle to finish at 2 inches, sewn-in, then the patch must be 2 1/2 inches square to allow for the quarter-inch side seam allowances. So, according to EQ, you cut the square at 2 7/8" to make the triangle square big enough. 2 7/8" is
3/8" bigger than the triangle square patch will be before you sew it in the quilt, but it is 7/8" bigger than the finished size of 2 inches when all is sewn and done.
And, just to make it a bit more confusing, I always add a whole inch to the finished, sewn-in size. This makes my triangle square patch bit larger than it needs to be and allows me to square it up and trim it to the exact size. Takes time and can get tedious with a lot of triangle squares, but it makes it so much easier to sew everything together neatly.
It is confusing and easy to mess up. Making a test block is always the safest way to make sure you aren't misreading instructions. I almost always sew up one block before a do a lot of cutting. I have learned the hard way that my math isn't foolproof!
Iris (have a whole bunch of machine-embroidered letter blocks squared beautifully to 7 1/2". The other blocks in the quilt were 8". Sigh.)
2-1/2" + the 3/8" for the end of the triangle. other than that ya lost me somewhere. j.
"I.E.Z." wrote... You're right about the cutting sizes. I looked at the Bear Paw block and another block I use a lot. They're saying that your triangle needs to be a certain size to accomodate the diagonal seam allowance, but they don't bother to mention that the *other* half of the square they're telling you to cut, in order to get it, can also be used as another triangle! They seem to consider the other half as "waste" even though it needn't be. I use the method you mention to do half-square triangles whenever I can, which is almost always, so it never seemed odd to me. I only look at the cutting diagrams to check how big to cut each patch, and don't pay attention to how many it says I need (I'm used to figuring that out myself and only trust my own math - usually!). So the fact that they might be telling you to cut double the number needed never occurred to me.
This is probably why the total yardage requirements are off so much. Again, I don't look at that because I heard they were way off and I prefer to do my own calculations anyway. Plus, I don't buy for specific projects, I just collect fabric and use what I have enough of, after I've made an estimate myself.
Re: 3/8" vs 7/8" additional. If you want your half-square triangle to finish at 2 inches, sewn-in, then the patch must be 2 1/2 inches square to allow for the quarter-inch side seam allowances. So, according to EQ, you cut the square at 2 7/8" to make the triangle square big enough. 2 7/8" is
3/8" bigger than the triangle square patch will be before you sew it in the quilt, but it is 7/8" bigger than the finished size of 2 inches when all is sewn and done.
And, just to make it a bit more confusing, I always add a whole inch to the finished, sewn-in size. This makes my triangle square patch bit larger than it needs to be and allows me to square it up and trim it to the exact size. Takes time and can get tedious with a lot of triangle squares, but it makes it so much easier to sew everything together neatly.
It is confusing and easy to mess up. Making a test block is always the safest way to make sure you aren't misreading instructions. I almost always sew up one block before a do a lot of cutting. I have learned the hard way that my math isn't foolproof!
Iris (have a whole bunch of machine-embroidered letter blocks squared beautifully to 7 1/2". The other blocks in the quilt were 8". Sigh.)
"Paul> Iris or Pat,
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Basically, you decide how big you want your triangle square to be when it is all sewn in (minus quarter inch seam allowances). Say you want it to finish at 2 inches. So the triangle square patch, after the diagonal seam is sewn, but before you sew it in, must be 2 1/2 inches square (2 inches plus the two quarter inch seam allowances on either side). (This is the same for any quilt patch - you have to add seam allowances.) But for triangle squares you also have to add room for the interior diagonal seam. So you would add 3/8" to 2 1/2" and get 2 7/8". This is the size you would cut your squares in the first place, before you put two squares together, draw the diagonal line and sew on either side of it. After you sew on either side of the line you drew on the 2 7/8" square, you cut down the center diagonally and open up your two triangle squares that result. Each triangle square should measure 2 1/2".
'other' than that, ya lost me somewhere. see below. no worrys. j.
"jeanne-nzlstar*"wrote...
Basically, you decide how big you want your triangle square to be when it is all sewn in (minus quarter inch seam allowances). Say you want it to finish at 2 inches. So the triangle square patch, after the diagonal seam is sewn, but before you sew it in, must be 2 1/2 inches square (2 inches plus the two quarter inch seam allowances on either side). (This is the same for any quilt patch - you have to add seam allowances.) But for triangle squares you also have to add room for the interior diagonal seam. So you would add 3/8" to 2 1/2" and get 2 7/8". This is the size you would cut your squares in the first place, before you put two squares together, draw the diagonal line and sew on either side of it. After you sew on either side of the line you drew on the 2 7/8" square, you cut down the center diagonally and open up your two triangle squares that result. Each triangle square should measure 2 1/2".
Hope that helps!
Iris
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