Before I forget, if you like Libs Elliott’s quilt designs, she is having a huge 50% off sale on downloadable patterns right now.  You can buy them online at http://www.libselliott.com/shop/ .  I bought 3 for $5 CAD each and in USD that was – well I don’t remember; maybe $13?  Anyway, insanely cheap. She has other things on sale (and some that aren’t) but the downloadable PDFs are all half off.

The picture to the left here is one that I bought today. I have no idea when I’ll actually make it but the price was too good to pass up.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming….I actually started working on the EPP block for the Splendid Sampler yesterday and have most of it cut out and glue basted to templates so the hard part is done there.  In the meantime, I took a look at today’s block and clearly it was paper pieced.  Or was it???  No, it is not a paper pieced pattern.  Say what?  Look at the bird legs on that thing!  No way can I accurately sew that; I know my limitations.

I’m no EQ7 expert but I’m getting to the place where I can find my way around some of these easier things, and this was an easy one.

Yes, I am resisting any attempt to accurately cut these pieces and recreated it in EQ7 as a paper pieced project.  Try saying that 3 times fast!  If you have EQ7 and haven’t turned a drawing into paper piecing, it’s actually really easy.  1 – download the picture onto your computer one way of the other (I used the snipping tool on the PDF version of her picture and saved it to Drop Box). 2 – open up EQ7, click on block, new block, and easy draw block.  Make sure your block size is set to 6″ x 6″ at this point.  I’m so distracted right now because one of our dogs sitting next to me has the hiccups and he’s asleep!  I digress….

3 – at the bottom, click on tracing image and then on the tool bar at the top left, click on import image.  4 – pull it in from wherever you saved it and if you need to nudge it left/right or up/down to have it fit in the square that you want it to fit in. 5 – click on the top left corner of the graphing area and import the photo.  That should all take about 30 seconds.

6 – click on Easy Draw and at this point, start tracing around the lines like you can see I did in the 2nd picture above.  There are a couple that aren’t 100% exactly where she had the lines and that’s okay by me.  That’s why we call it art, right?

7 – you can color it in if you want; I did just for the purpose of demonstrating it here but it’s not necessary if all you’re going to do is print. 8 – click on print, foundation pattern, preview and you should see the paper pieces like what I have here.

In fact, I would even go so far as to say back when you’re drawing some of the lines in, click over to print/foundation to double check that the preview looks like it’s going to be what you expected to see with the 1/4″ seams around the various sections.

If you’re a very precise sewer on small blocks and don’t need the help of paper piecing then skip it but this was so much easier for me.  And you don’t have to absolutely use EQ7 to do this; if you made several copies of the PDF where she has the pattern, you could cut out sections and add your own 1/4″ as you cut around the sections.  If it helps, feel free to use mine as a guide.

In other news, I received an email from Hand Quilter that several of their accessories were on sale for 15% off, including one that I’ve had my eye on – the ruler base for the Avante.  I went to our local dealer and as I was picking one up I could hardly believe what I saw hanging next to it – the set of 3 echo feet!

I had wanted these previously for my Sweet Sixteen but they were out of stock for what seemed like months and I had forgotten about them.  The best part?  Not only did I grab the only one they had in stock but it was also 15% off!  These are especially great for echoing around applique although they can be used for a variety of quilting patterns.  They echo in 3 different widths depending on how wide you want the rows to be apart from each other.