In Which the United States Postal Service is Out to Get Me, So I Design a Scrappy Quilt in EQ8 for My Accuquilt Qube Dies

Greetings, y'all!  I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am that my Internet is working again -- it's been down since Sunday afternoon.  I am so happy to be back in the 21st century!

New Scrappy Quilt Design Brought to You by Accuquilt, EQ8, and a Day Without Internet

What I am NOT happy about is that the first part we ordered for my APQS Millennium longarm machine -- the $200 head encoder -- did NOT solve the problem with my machine, so we had to order the $700 Bliss carriage encoder as well.  Did I ever tell you guys what was wrong with my longarm?  The motor randomly surges and speeds up in stitch regulated mode, especially noticeable and especially annoying when I'm moving the machine head at a slow and steady pace, like for ruler work.  When stitching in Manual Mode (without stitch regulation) she runs smooth and steady -- but I want my stitch regulator to work the way it's supposed to and if that means replacing a couple of expensive parts, so be it.  But the cost of the parts is not even the most annoying bit, though.  

The United States Post Office is conspiring against me, rerouting my APQS parts all over the country to prevent me from getting my machine up and running smoothly again.  I kid you not!  That first part was ordered a week ago Thursday and was shipped Priority 2-Day Mail from Carroll, Iowa to Charlotte, North Carolina, but it didn't get here until the following Wednesday evening because the USPS distribution center in Iowa decided to send my package to Akron, Ohio instead of to Charlotte, North Carolina.  After installing the part and testing the machine again on Wednesday night, we ordered the second part (the one I'm still waiting on) first thing Thursday morning.  Again, the package was shipped out Priority Mail with a 2-Day estimated delivery time from the post office, with the tracking number originally telling me my package would be here on Saturday...  This time, the package was sent straight from the Iowa distribution center to the Charlotte, NC distribution center and it was HERE IN CHARLOTTE on Saturday morning.  But alas!  Instead of forwarding my precious package from the distribution center in Charlotte to my local Charlotte post office, so it could be loaded onto a little mail truck and delivered to my house, the Charlotte distribution center put my package back on a truck or a plane or a camel or a whatever and sent it off to another distribution center in LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.  So here I was with no Internet and no longarm machine, since the post office is taking my replacement parts on a tour of the country like my package is Flat Stanley or something...

Flat Stanley and My APQS Parts are Both In Las Vegas 

When you can't quilt in real life, it's EQ8 to the rescue with a Virtual Quilting Fix!  Designing in EQ8 was one of the few things I could do with my computer that did not require an Internet connection.

When I was up in Boone, NC visiting my son at Appalachian State University a few weeks ago, I found a lovely Bernina dealer and quilt shop where I purchased a larger AccuQuilt GO! die cutter (I had the GO! Baby version previously).  The larger die cutting machine that I purchased was packaged as a Ready, Set, GO! so it came bundled with an 8" Qube, which is a set of several dies that can be combined to create 72 different 8" quilt blocks.  

8 Inch Accuquilt Qube Die Set Can Cut Out All 72 Blocks Shown on the Side of the Box

Now, in order to use my AccuQuilt dies, I need to design quilts with blocks that use the shapes and sizes that correspond to my cutting dies.  I would LOVE IT if Accuquilt and Electric Quilt could get together and come up with an Accuquilt block library for EQ8 that I could download and link to my software, but so far this has not happened.  So I pulled out my manual (yes, I purchased the spiral bound manual for EQ8 -- I like to read, highlight, and annotate my manuals!) and looked up how to create a custom block library under My Favorites.  My new library is called AccuQuilt 8 Inch Blocks, and I'm going to put all of the blocks that I can make with my 8" Qube dies in that folder.  That way, when I want to design something that I can cut out in a jiffy with my die cutter, I can go straight to that folder for my blocks.

So the first block in the AccuQuilt Qube booklet is called Airplane:

Airplane Block from AccuQuilt Qube Booklet

There was a very similar block already in the EQ8 Block Library called Airplane, so I started with that, edited it to look just like the block in the AccuQuilt brochure, and then I saved it into my custom block library in EQ8.  Then I suppose I should have gone on to add the next block into my custom library...  But I decided to play with the Airplane block instead.

50 x 66 Airplane Quilt, 3 Colors

This is how the AccuQuilt 72 Blocks brochure suggests laying out the Airplane block.  It's cute, right?  But for me personally, it bugs me to have unnecessary seams in my quilt blocks.  In the quilt above, I don't like that I have two small light blue triangles instead of one larger triangle, or four large triangles that could be one larger square.  However, it would NOT bug me if the fabrics for those triangles were similar colors but different fabrics...  So I played around with a bunch of mostly Kaffe Fassett fabrics from Free Spirit to see what a scrappy version of this Airplane quilt might look like:

Same 50 x 66 Airplane Quilt, Scrappy Version

Now, doesn't THAT look like fun?  I replaced the deep reddish orange with various pink, orange, yellow, or coral prints.  I replaced the deep blue with various blue, green, or teal prints.  And I replaced most of the light blue patches with an off white, but mixed in a few other neutrals so I wouldn't have four of the same white triangles coming together to form a square.

Ah, I see you rolling your eyes out there.  You've seen me post so many EQ8 quilt designs here that have not yet been realized in actual fabric.  Will this quilt ever make it beyond this blog post, you might ask?

WELL...  This could actually be a good "leaders and enders" type project, once I got it all cut out and organized.  It would also make a great portable project, too, for my when my bee gets together, and for our guild's monthly Sit-and-Sew-Saturday.  I'd just need three Ziplock bags containing the following:

1. 4" HSTs (Half Square Triangles), 192 of them, in shades of Orange/Pink/Coral/Yellow
2. 2" HSTs, 576 of them, cut from scraps of whites and off-whites
3. 2" HSTs, 192 of them, from scraps of blues and greens

Accuquilt says their die cutters can handle 4-6 layers of fabric at a time, and I love how precisely the dies cut out each triangle with the little dog ears pretrimmed.  I'm curious how long it would take me to get all of this cut out?  I probably don't have enough scraps in large enough sizes, but I definitely have enough fat quarters in my stash.  Stay tuned...

But meanwhile, here's my weekly Tuesday To Do list:

1. Label and Machine Bind the Christmas Outreach Quilt
2. Seam the Backing for the Tumbler Outreach Quilt (that one's next on the frame, as soon as that blasted part comes for my longarm machine)
3. Clean Up Studio; Set Up One Machine for Curved Piecing (Double Wedding Ring and Giant Clam Shells) and Set Up the Other Machine for Foundation Paper Piecing (Anders' Modern Building Blocks Sampler)

I'm linking up today's post with:

SUNDAY

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       Moving it Forward at Em's Scrap Bag

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us