I have been working on how to produce a pattern for other quilters using Electric Quilt 7. It isn’t very hard in case you want to do this too. You make your pattern, then set your printer for the pdf instead of the printer and print it. Be sure to check the print preview before you do this, because you can’t go back and edit it if something is wrong.
For those of you who are interested I made a small storm-at-sea foundation piecing pattern and stored them as three pdf files you can download from the files below and use if you want. In the future I plan on making some small wall hanging quilts that I draw myself, so I really wanted to try this out to see if it works for people. If you print off the foundation pattern onto foundation paper of some sort, be sure to set your printer for actual size rather than fit to page. This little foundation pattern makes 7 inch blocks when completed. Then, for the quilt shown, cut four border pieces 4 inches wide x 28.5 for a 3.5 inch border and cut four 4 inch squares for the 3.5 inch corner blocks. You can always adjust the size by adding more blocks and increasing the borders.
Please refer back to my blog about foundation piecing here for what I have found as important for good success. I also found that for the 7 inch block, cutting 3 inch strips from which to cut blocks and triangles for the foundation pieces of the four colors helps a lot. The cool thing about foundation piecing is if your 3 inch strip is actually a little uneven or a little bigger or smaller than the three inches it is ok. You cut them down anyway after stitching.
storm at sea small quilt yardage You probably need a little more yardage than this says you do. This was figured by EQ7 for precise cutting and piecing, and I use larger pieces for foundation piecing.
7 inch storm at sea foundation piecing
This may seem odd to those of you who know my work as an art quilter but may not have been reading my past blogs. I am making a new quilt in the “Waiting…” series, which will eventually be mostly a pictorial quilt, but has a big wave made from this traditional storm at sea pattern that merges into a pictorial ocean. This is from Electric Quilt 7, but I did some adjusting and chose the fabrics for this. If you have EQ7, you can make your own, but when you print the foundation pattern be sure to move the segments that are divided by the pages onto the second page before printing. You can do that in print preview.
Sew happy everyone! Try making at least one storm at sea foundation pieced block.