Prism99

My experience and hope also! I was a software programmer and systems analyst in a previous life (and have a degree in MIS), but I do not find EQ at all intuitive. I have both EQ7 and Quilt Pro, and QP is definitely more intuitive for me to learn. Incidentally, I got Quilt Pro when it was on sale for 50% off from the Quilt Pro website (I think it was around Black Friday/Christmas). Cost was $50 at that time; much lower than EQ. From what I have heard, Quilt Pro is very comparable but does not do *all* of the fancy things that EQ7 can do (assuming you learn it to that level). For the average quilter, Quilt Pro is both less expensive and easier to learn. (I would consider myself an average/intermediate level quilter.)

EQ7 seems to have extremes. A few people take to it like a duck to water. I'd say more of us, though, throw up our hands in frustration. I too thought it would be easy to learn because of my programming background. I do think those who find it easy tend to be younger and are the type who find it easy to learn how to use smartphones without books or a teen on hand.

cathyvv

Me, too,. I wrote systems requirements, documentation, test plans, and user documentation, so I thought that I would have no problem learning EQ7. Unfortunately, EQ7 is not as intuitive as it could/should be, even with the video lessons and documentation. I've used it several times and always wind up asking myself, "What were they thinking?" at some point during the process.

It's learnable and very useful, but not user friendly.

Sewnoma

It must be all that fussy attention to little details that appeals!!

Well I'm still in my 30's (by a hair) and figured out my smartphone just fine, but some stuff in EQ7 is still beyond me!

But to be fair, I haven't really TRIED to learn some of those things. I get so far and realize I don't know what to do next and it's just so much easier to go back to my faithful graph paper than it is to do the research to figure out what I'm missing within the software! So it's partially just laziness on my part, I can't entirely blame the software for how slowly I'm learning to use it.

But even with my partial understanding of the software, I love playing around in there. It's a lot of fun to design blocks and throw them into a quilt and play with rotations and color options with just a click. I am sure I've gotten my money's worth just in entertainment value, and I also HAVE successfully designed several quilts in there.

Sewnoma

It IS really neat to see how many of us quilters are (or were) in the IT/Software/Programming biz. Maybe there's a higher percentage here since it's a website (and therefore theoretically more appealing to technology-minded people) but I still think it's an interesting demographic.

romille

They just changed the way that works. You have unlimited installs now, but I think only two can be active at one time.

romille

Wow, there are lots of us software geeks here! I didn't realize there were so many. I guess quilting appeals to that little OCD side many of us seem to share.

Ya'll aren't helping! I am still on the fence. Maybe I should pop in to my neighborhood quilt shop and ask the proprietor if I can demo his copy. Looking at the add-on's had me excited, but now I am hesitant again. I am going to be irritated by poor design the whole time, aren't I? The Pfaff Quilt Creator software (that cost 6-fricken-hundred dollars) is awful as well. The entire UX is antiquated and lacks any form of intuitiveness. I hope EQ7 isn't that bad.

Auntie V

I am a very big fan of EQ. I have no idea what an interface in a program is and really could care less. What I wanted was something that I could use with my computer to design quilt tops and have the computer calculate how much of each fabric I would need to make my design. I wanted to play around with color options and settings before I invested my $$ in the fabric of my choice. If I was doing an applique I wanted to be able to print out the the pieces so I could make my own templates out of a sturdy material. I also wanted a quick way to play around with different known quilt block combinations to see how they "worked" together. I also wanted to do sampler quilts. EQ does all of that. I knew about foundation piecing but felt that printing out tons of paper foundation was not what I wanted to do. I feel that it uses way too much paper. But you can also do that with EQ. I really like that it will figure out how many of each size piece I need for each fabric.

Like others have mentioned, you need to be open to learning how to use EQ. I have Dear Jane, Block Base and a couple other add ons. I have not looked at the Dear Jame program in some time because I found it very confusing when I purchased it way back when I first started looking for a quilt design program. EQ has come a long way towards being user friendly since I first purchased Dear Jane and EQ5.

The only thing that I would like to see is an active forum (like this) where there would be a forum format for just quilt related software posting so that users of the program can talk about the designing of blocks and quilts with each other. To me, I find reading other posts is an additional way to learn how something is done.

ManiacQuilter2

I agree. Once you have your block drawn or retrieved one from EQ's Library, you can print Rotary instructions or print out Paper Piecing. Here is the Paper Piecing pattern I printed out on my EQ5 and the Mug rug I made from the pattern.

Onebyone

I have been using EQ since it was on floppy and used MS DOS. I had to write programs in DOS for one of my college classes, my mind still hasn't unwarped. LOL. EQ 7 is very easy to learn, you just have to use it to remember. If you only use it once in a while you have to start over trying to remember how to make it do what you want it to.

Sheri.a

I use computers (home and work) more than 50 hours a week. I have used my EQ7 maybe a total of 20 hours to help me decide colors and how much fabric I will need. I haven't designed a quilt *yet*.

What I miss is a function to allow me to copy and paste a finished block(s) so I don't have to repeat the same steps over and over. Microsoft has spoiled me on that one! Am I missing it?