I have partnered with The Electric Quilt Company to offer you a chance to win a copy of EQ7 quilt design software!  I bought EQ7 five years ago and use it on a nearly daily basis.  I would like to offer you the chance to do the same.  The value of this prize is $189 and all you need to do is sew a quilt block to enter.

Here are the rules:
The contest begins March 15, 2017 and ends on April 17, 2017.
To enter, head over to Instagram and follow me @duringquiettime. Share the graphic that you see above by reposting it and using the hashtags #improvpaperpiecing and #eq7improv (no purchase needed to enter).  There, you have entered once!

To enter again, sew any block from my book Improv Paper Piecing:  A Modern Approach to Quilt Design.  You can either sew one of the blocks from the patterns provided or follow an exercise or design prompt to create your own.  Share a picture of your block on IG and again, tag it with #improvpaperpiecing and #eq7improv.  You can sew as many blocks as you like to enter again and again.

A random participant will win EQ7!

EQ7 and Improv Paper Piecing are a great pair.  I used EQ7 to design all the blocks and quilts in the book using my improv design technique.  Once the blocks were designed, I grouped and numbered them and easily created pattern pieces to share with you.  While you can do this using paper and pencil and a light source, it is simply quicker and easier in EQ.  I also played with my layouts, rotating blocks and flipping to their mirror images in order to discover the layouts that spoke to me.  Here’s an example:

This is one of the cover quilts from my book.  It’s called Paper Trail.  I loved using a large selection of prints from my low volume collection, paired with my new color crush, cinnamon.

After I designed the block, I put it into a traditional grid layout. I was underwhelmed.

Using the rotate feature in EQ, I rotated the blocks in the even numbered rows.  I was starting to really like it.

Next, I staggered the second and fourth columns and knew I had found the layout that I liked.

Here’s one more gratuitous shot, just because I took a lot of photos…I might as well use them, right??  If you like this pattern, you can find it in the Object based section of the book.  I mocked it up in lots of color combinations and it looks great, so I can’t wait to see your version!

I think that you will really enjoy using EQ7 while working with the exercises and design prompts in my book.  And if you are lucky, you can win it!  So, grab your copy of Improv Paper Piecing, share the graphic on IG, and sew a block, or two, or three and tag them all #improvpaperpiecing and #eq7improv.  Maybe you will win!  Good luck!