Your EQ8 stash and fabrics: back them up and move them

Where EQ8 keeps fabrics

“Stash” means two things to an EQ8 quilter, and EQ8 keeps fabrics in four places. It helps to know which is which before you back up or move:

• The Fabric Library comes with EQ8: more than 6,000 manufacturer fabrics, which can’t be deleted. You don’t need to back these up.
• EQ Stash downloads are fabric collections you’ve added from Electric Quilt. EQ8 keeps them in My EQ8 › Add-on Libraries, and they show under EQ Stash Online in the Fabric Library.
• My Favorite Fabrics are libraries you built yourself. EQ8 saves each one as a file ending .FAB in the User folder inside My EQ8.
• Your project’s Sketchbook holds the fabrics you added to that project, including scans or photos of your own fabric. They’re saved inside the .pj8 file.

EQ8 also has an Images folder inside My EQ8, which is where its Import Image button looks first. Every one of these places is inside My EQ8, which is why Electric Quilt says to back up that whole folder.

Backing up your fabrics

Copy the whole My EQ8 folder to a USB drive or cloud storage. That keeps your projects, your Stash downloads, your My Favorite Fabrics libraries and your images together. On a new computer, Electric Quilt’s steps put all of it back, and your My Library files appear in EQ8 again: back up EQ8 and move to a new computer.

Two cautions from Electric Quilt. Don’t rename library files in Windows Explorer or the Finder (rename them in EQ8’s Library dialog). And there’s no button to delete a custom library inside EQ8: deleting its .FAB file from the User folder removes it, so take care when tidying up.

What comes across to Quarter Inch

Quarter Inch reads EQ8 and EQ7 projects: the .pj8 and .pj7 files. Each project’s fabrics come with it. Library files (.FAB) and the Add-on Libraries folder aren’t projects, so they’re left alone when you choose your My EQ8 folder.

• Prints are drawn with EQ’s own swatch, at EQ’s scale. In the 384 real quilts we test against, 270 use a print.
• Solids from EQ’s palette have no fabric behind them, so we show each one beside the nearest color on our color card, Quarter Inch Solids. The report calls these Matched.
• Fabrics chosen by name in EQ keep their EQ name and swatch.

You can see them all on Fabrics, under From EQ files: each file’s fabrics, the quilts they’re in, and how the solids match. That tab appears once you have an EQ file in your library.

Keeping EQ prints in My fabrics

A print stays tied to its EQ file until you save it to My fabrics. On From EQ files, each file with prints has a button: Save its print for one, or Save all for the rest. A saved print:

• keeps a copy of EQ’s swatch, so it stays even if you delete the file;
• can be chosen in any quilt, ones you start in Quarter Inch included;
• is saved once, however many of your files it’s in, matched by its maker and number.

Save your EQ prints to My fabrics goes step by step.

Your real stash, on shelves

EQ’s Stash is fabric you can buy. The stash in your sewing room is the one Quarter Inch keeps track of. In My fabrics, add photos of what you own (Add fabrics, then Many photos at once), and how much of each you have. They sit on shelves by color under In your stash, on every plan, Free included.

A print saved from an EQ file can go in your stash too, once it’s in My fabrics: give it an amount like any other. Then the yardage takes what you have off what to buy, and when you’re picking fabrics for a quilt, Only fabrics I have shows just those. See your stash: shelves, amounts and what you have.

For everything else that comes across from EQ, feature by feature, see what comes across.