Betty Jo, I just love that you and your DIL are teaching are teaching your grandson to quilt. What an inspiration! I have 3 great-neices who live close by. They are ages 6, 6, and 9. Hopefully, they will want to learn at some time as well. I have used an online free service to enlarge my drawings. It is <blockposter.com.> You send them a pdf. file and tell them what size you want it to be and they send a file back ready to print out on your printer. I sent in a 3 inch drawing and got it back in a 36"sq. file that I printed out in tiles and taped together. I don't use excel and I don't have Electric Quilt so this works quite well for me. I have not tried blocks that have to be precise. For drawings it is just great. Suits my computer skill level. Lois

BJ your grandson is adorable. Perhaps he is a Ricky Timms in the making? I love your fantasy writer project - my daughter would love it also as she really loves anything to do with fairies and wizards etc. The idea for practicing FMQ on a fabric printed photo is great too and I am definitely going to try that and if it works it will be the perfect size to send off for the AAQI quilts project. Thanks. Rita. X

Margo and Kathy, Thanks! Kevin is really doing a very wonderful job learning to quilt and so is his playmate and Beth (DIL) is making sure the emphasis stays on having fun. I am delighted, of course!

Betty Jo, I had never visited your blog before- wow, you are so very talented! With a diverse set of interests and skills too. I loved the article on printing a photo on fabric and then machine quilting it. And loved seeing your little grandson sewing away- having a great time too it looks like.

Kathy

I don't have EXCEL, but that looks like an excellent tute! Thanks BJ!

I just put instructions on my personal blog on how I use Microsoft Excel to enlarge and print my patterns. I've mentioned this in the past, but thought I would put it on my own blog and it's a touch more detailed. It works well for me. Here's the link.

http://blog.bjfabricartist.com/

Cheers.