If you seen the cute icon at the bottom of the page, I design my patterns in EQ8. But first….a little back story. I have a weird affliction called aphantasia, meaning I can not make mental images. When someone says close your eyes and picture a beach…..I see nothing. I think this is part of the reason I enjoy photography so much. I can not mentally go back and visualize a place. So by taking pictures, I can later look at those and see the place. I fell off a hayride in kindergarten and had a pretty bad head injury. I think the aphantasia may have been caused by that, because I honestly can’t remember if I could picture things in my pre-school days.
Anywho, back to EQ8. I can think to myself I want to design a quilt that has pyramids on it. A big pyramid and some small pyramids like I what I have seen out in Giza, Egypt.
So into EQ8, I went. I could use my idea, search block types and start to play around with designs.
The design started out a little rough I will admit (I do like blue….lol, but what was I thinking). As I worked with it, it became more and more realistic to what I had visualized in my mind. I think one of the most fun parts of the EQ8 is being able to import photos of the fabric that I planned to use when making the quilt that gives you an even better idea of what it was going to look like.
And here is the finally product. I think it looks pretty close to the final mock-up.
One limitation the software has, it designs the quilt, the end. So once you design the quilt in order to make the quilt, you have to be able to do the quilt math. There are tools within the software where you can measure sections, but you need to be able to add in seam allowances to get the finished size you want.
As a quilt pattern writer, I also need to make diagrams on how to make things like the half square triangles this pattern uses. I do use a different software to make my diagrams. For a Christmas quilt I have coming out later this year, I had to make the FPP diagrams in the other program as well due to the unique shape (note EQ8 does produce FPP templates and it worked for parts of the Christmas quilt, but there was one section it did not work on).
Finally, EQ8 does estimate the fabric needed to make the project, which is really nice. Some times I’ve notice the estimate is right on and other times it seems off a bit. EQ8’s estimate of the third fabric down and my fabric B are 1/2 yard different. With several other difference I see, it looks like EQ8 underestimates a bit (I probably overestimated a bit to allow one extra cut at the largest size in case of an oops). The software also did not predict the backing fabric needed. That being said, sometimes I am shopping for the fabric before I finish writing the pattern. So the EQ8 estimate does give me a pretty decent starting point on how much fabric to get (I do round it up though).
Overall, these limitations are something I can work with. I really enjoy using the EQ8 and I have way more quilts in design mode then have made it all the way to written pattern. (If only I could do something about my time limitations…lol).
So if you are interested in trying out the EQ8 software, please use my affiliate link (I get little something at no extra cost to you). If you are interested in making the Pyramids Quilt get 10% off the pattern in my Etsy shop with the code BLOG10.
