EQ 7 question
 

I just ordered EQ 7 off ebay (one seller offers $15 off the standard price and free shipping BTW). I am now wondering if the EQ 7 fabric library contains JoAnns fabrics? I have one I've been planning on using a lot of in a storm at sea quilt but am not sure about now. I'd like to work out a better visual on it before cutting out all those diamonds!

first of all joann's sells many of the top brands of fabric so many will be included...they do not make their own fabric. secondly, when you have to make a block with 3 different blue florals with white backgrounds...you will get the same feel by choosing anything from their libraries with the same scale.... many will have the exact prints you are interested in, but the shade, tone, tint, and scale are what you want to make your design choices.

You can scan in any fabrics you'd like, but I usually use deemail's suggestion and pick one that is similar in overall color and value.

A lot of the fabric manufacturers are putting jpg collections on their web sites for EQ users and other customers who work with the digital swatches.

And there is a huge stash of swatches available on the EQ site, too. :) (And I mean HUGE!)

I'll just have to look then. There is no selvage info on this fabric. Some JoAnns fabrics say "made Exclusively for Joanns Fabrics." The reason I want to plug it into EQ 7 is that I'm doing a storm at sea pattern called Rainbow after the storm, but as usual, not making it exactly as printed. It'll be one row longer, the center blocks will have one less square in the square (but have a visual square formed by embroidered tractors), and I'm using a multi print called Candy Dots (I think). Sooo, there are lots of colors that will read as solids (the rainbow colors) but I'm not sure of the multi. It might read as orange, maybe not. I colored it out on a storm at sea form/graph, but I'm just not sure. I'm wondering if I should choose a fabric that reads more solid and just use this one as border treatment....it incorporates together all the colors used in the quilt and I still like it, amazing!

I wouldn't consider the brands Joannes sells, top brands of fabrics. However, as was said you can scan them in.

When the various fabric manufacturers make the digital swatches (or jpgs) available, are they all to the same scale? Meaning, does each picture represent the same size swatch of the actual fabric?

No, so far they don't standardize the sizing, but I *think* they're all doing a good job of preparing the jpgs with the same resolution. There are good instructions for keeping the fabric in scale in the help files.

Ooooh, good question.

I believe you can scan the fabric in or take a picture of it and import the jpg image. The results are both a tad different from each other, and you can see which method you prefer the looks of :) :) :)

Ah, yet another reason to get the printer/scanner talking to the computer better. Prints fine but still haven't been able to send a scan, sigh. I guess I'm going to have to call hp tech support. I'm looking forward to playing with EQ 7 and seeing what I can do with it!