Editor's Note: This article first appeared in 1997. Since then Barb has published a second book, EQ4 Magic, which is full of wonderful tips and secrets for users of Electric Quilt 4.
She remains active on Planet Patchwork's Info-EQ maillist.

Barb Vlack has recently made a name for herself in the world of computing quilters with the publlcation of her new book Too Much Fun! (see review elsewhere in this issue). This knowledgeable and entertaining guide, published by the Electric Quilt Company, is the ultimate expression of Barb's love (not to say obsession) with computer quilt design using Electric Quilt software.

But what did Barb do before she had EQ? We asked her to trace the origins of her passion for quilting.

"I think my mother would love to think the quilting genes came through her side of the family," Barb says. "Perhaps they did, though my grandmother never quilted nor did my mother until after I started. In fact, after I made my first quilt, my mother admitted that she had always wanted to try that. She even took the first quiltmaking classes I taught. Only then did my grandmother unveil a log cabin quilt that her mother had made, which helped my mother remember a doll quilt that her grandmother had made for her and suddenly we had a matched pair. When the book, Old Swedish Quilts, came out last year as part of a commemoration of 150 years of Swedish immigration to the United States, I saw some of the quilting influences from Sweden that probably played on my great-grandmother, who immigrated in the late 1800s.

"I first became interested in making quilts when I was in high school in the early 60s and Woman's Day magazine ran a series on Early American crafts. I saved all the articles from my mother's issues, and I still have them. I didn't start anything, but I collected ideas. I started to follow a pattern in Woman's Day and applique hundreds of denim squares. I collected all the materials but lost interest after the first couple of squares.

"Then in 1976, with the renewed interest in colonial crafts due to the Bicentennial, I started a Cathedral Window queen size bedspread. To this day I have enough put together for a nice table runner. That same year I made my brother and his fiancee a patchwork tied comforter from my sewing scraps that probably weighed a ton, especially since I thoughtfully put in a double batt to keep them warm and used kettlecloth fabrics. It was not a big loss when it was burned in a fire that destroyed their apartment a few years later.

"When my two sons were born, I left the professional world of speech pathology and became a full-time mom. I made my first baby quilt for the second son and started honing skills that were worthy of a real quiltmaker. I was proud of my machine applique and hand quilting on my first baby quilt and felt (at that time) that the machine applique was a much better technique for a baby quilt than hand applique. But I grew leaps and bounds when I hand pieced and appliqued my next quilt for my first son. I followed a pattern series in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine for the Fireworks Over the City quilt, which commemorates my son's July 3rd birthday."

Those who have seen Barb's quilt designs know that they are based largely on quilt blocks, but what she does with them is not necessarily traditional. "I would call my quilting style 'Innovative,'" she says. "It is based a lot on traditional techniques but I always challenge myself to change from the traditional. I try to use different colorations and different settings. I do venture into the world of art quilts when I make paraments and vestments for churches and clergy. For several years now I have been receiving commissions from many local churches to create sets of altar cloths and clergy stoles for various liturgical seasons of the church year. I use quiltmaking techniques for original designs in this area of my work.

"I use machine and hand techniques. For three years I have been designing hand applique patterns for a class I am teaching through a local quilt store. A couple of these designs were drawn in Electric Quilt and several of them are now being published and are available through national pattern distributors. Machine piecing and machine quilting are the only ways I think I'll get through all the quilts I want to make."

As with many creative people, Barb's inspirations come from just about everywhere: "I read lots. I collect fabrics. I go to many quilt shows all over the country. There was an exercise I remember from grade school that probably was a test of creativity. We had to think of lots of different ways to use a paperclip, for example, other than its obvious purpose. I look at quilt blocks the same way. I love Japanese design and get inspired by Japanese motifs and quilts. We live in a woods full of wild flowers in the spring, and they have been the subjects for my hand applique designs and patterns. I also love working with antique quilt blocks and tops. I feel I am doing a collaboration with long past quilters when I finish their tops, sometimes in ways they may not have originally intended."

She also finds inspiration and knowledge in her fellow quilters. "In 1980 I was a charter member of two wonderful quilt guilds that formed in the Chicago area," she says. "I had previously belonged to an embroiderer's guild and realized that belonging to a guild would enhance my learning curve in quiltmaking. I started meeting and taking classes from nationally known quiltmakers and continue doing that today."

Although she has entered her quilts locally in shows in the Chicago area, Barb says she has not yet ventured into a national arena. "I aspire to do that someday and there's no time like the present, I'm sure," she says. "But too often I just don't have the quilt finished, slides developed, and the entry form, envelope and stamp in the same place at the right time. I work best to tight deadlines; however, priorities sometimes change and I'm off developing a commission instead of readying a quilt for a show. That's okay."

Though she is building a reputation as a quilter and teacher, with the release of Too Much Fun! Barb's real claim to fame is as a design guru. Her interest goes back before even the first version of The Electric Quilt. "After using a computer primarily for word processing, I learned about software developed for quilt designing and bought the least expensive program available to try it," she recalls. "I was thrilled to draw blocks and set quilts. Eventually I graduated to Electric Quilt 1.0 and started to have even more fun designing with the computer. I started experimenting to find new and different ways to draw blocks and set them into quilts. Electric Quilt 2.0 offered more possibilities and I played and played. Then Electric Quilt 3.0 came out with even more ways to design quilts. I had developed a list of things I wanted a quilt program to do based on my various experimentations, and EQ3 offered the most. I wanted to be able to set a block on point next to a straight-set block and I figured out how to do that. I wanted to stretch blocks in a border in an uneven grid, and I figured that out. I wanted to set blocks of uneven sizes and an irregular grid to get optical illusions, and I figured that out, too.

"I learned to design quilts on the computer first by trying to copy anything I found in books and magazines, just to see if it could be done. Eventually my playing with What If? possibilities for changing anything in the quilt design led to serendipitous accidents. A new design was born. It didn't take long to figure that I could and should use my computer to design quilts I would never think to design on paper."

So how did the book come to be? "I had met Penny McMorris [co-owner of The Electric Quilt Company with husband Dean Neumann] at several quilt conferences I attended. When I started posting tips and answers to questions on the Info-EQ list, she already had a face to my name. She started paying some attention to what I was writing since I was offering ways to use the program even she and her staff hadn't considered yet, such as dividing a diamond quilt setting into equilateral triangles for Thousand Pyramids by drawing a square block with patches that would skew to triangles. I showed her and her husband, Dean Neumann (the EQ programmer) some of my project files at the IQA Festival in Houston in 1996 and posted some more ideas for designing with EQ3 on the Info-EQ list after that, so when I met them again in Paducah at the AQS show in April, 1997, they suggested taking my Info-EQ posts and using them as seeds for a book. They had a list of other design ideas they'd like to see addressed, and I told them I'd already been there, done that, and just needed to write the instructions.

"By mid-May, we had negotiated a contract, established a deadline of July 15th for my manuscript submission, and set a late August deadline for delivery to the printer. It happened. We stayed right on schedule. I have to tell you I worked day and night on that project. I forgot to schedule a summer vacation, but that was okay ... this year. I literally spent hundreds of hours learning every nook and cranny of the EQ3 program. As I typed out each chapter, I sent email attachments with the copy and EQ3 supporting design files to the Electric Quilt office for them to check. I loved it each time - and it happened frequently - Penny responded that I was amazing them with new ideas. More than once she phoned me rather than write email so I could hear her comments personally. It was great.

"I was writing somewhat blindly in that I had a goal to fill 200 pages but had only a vague idea of how one fully-typed page would convert, especially when illustrations were inserted. So I wrote until the EQ staff said, 'Stop!' and even then I had six chapters more than they could use. We hinted back and forth that we'd have to go to volume 2 and laughed. We're giggling now because it may be close to the truth, since Too Much Fun! is taking off very well right now."

Barb expresses great gratitude to Penny and the folks at EQ who encouraged her and edited her work. At a more basic level, she knows who else to thank: "I now know why many authors acknowledge the patience and understanding of their families during the writing process. My family endured reduced standards of housekeeping and pitched in; sometimes they cooked or just ate out - with or without me. Early in the writing period, my husband asked me if I had written much on the book that day. I thought he was checking up on me to see if I had procrastinated. Instead, he was checking to see if he should back up my files for the day. He was most helpful in making sure all my computer equipment kept running.

"My greatest reward that has come so far from writing Too Much Fun! is when an EQ3 user says I opened new doors and helped him/her discover more ways to use the program. I'm getting that feedback a lot lately. I love it. I want to say back, 'If you think that's good, wait until you see what could come next!' I'm losing my modesty and I'm not too embarrassed about that. VBG To those who say they don't have much time to spend learning the program, I offer that I already spent that time and Too Much Fun! should save them."

Perhaps more than any single person on the planet, Barb has mastered The Electric Quilt software. But what does she see in the future for quilt design software? And what would she like to have on her desk?

"I think the future direction of USING quilt design software is a whole new generation of innovative quiltmaking. I am truly hoping that Too Much Fun! will open some doors for many quiltmakers, especially those using EQ3, so they will design quilts on the computer that they would never do on paper. Some of these innovations would not even involve more complicated construction, but there could be more sophisticated designing. It's fantastic, then, to realize that everything that a quilter designs on EQ3 can be constructed with accurately drawn patterns and templates.

"The future/success of quilt design software looks very good to me, especially if the programmers collaborate with quilt designers to see what quilters could really use. We have a long wish list. I hear many quilters asking for the ability to scan not only fabrics but also drawings. I want to design with odd-shaped polygons, tessellations, circles, and free forms. We want a Windows based program. Many want a Mac program.

"Because I'm not a programmer, I don't recognize ways that programs could be improved with new possibilities or increased efficiency. I'm often happy with what I'm offered, and I'm notorious for finding workarounds for any limitations in a program that I might encounter. Very seldom do I give up. I want to be able to do everything, and I know that no one program will cover the gamut so far. That's why I have two quilt designing programs and a high-powered graphics program. I also recognize that unless I have my heart totally and compulsively set on something that is impossible to design in EQ3 or Quilt Pro or CorelDraw, I could find another possibility and not limit or end my life in quiltmaking."

The other side of computer quilting, of course, is the use of the internet. Asked about her experiences on the 'net, Barb emphasizes how much it has broadened her horizons as a quilter. "I think I've been on the internet about five years. My husband introduced me to a textile arts newsgroup and through that I found the QuiltNet maillist. I networked through that maillist and branched into several smaller maillists with more specific focuses. I now read/write with lists centering on EQ3, art quilts, Berninas, professionals in quiltmaking, fellowship, and fun and games. Through travels throughout the country I have met many of my cyber penpals. That has been a terrific experience. No matter where I went with my husband on his business trips, I could find quilters with familiar names who could guide me to the nearest fabric store! Now whenever I travel to quilt conferences, I can do the same.

"Through the internet maillists I have participated in exchanges and challenges that qualify for inclusion in a quilting resume. I can honestly say that I am internationally known and not stretch that truth. Some of my quilted pieces have traveled more extensively than I have. Truly I can say the Internet has affected and effected my quiltmaking, especially when I point out that Too Much Fun! was conceived on a maillist. I have participated in challenges with nontraditional quiltmakers that have influenced my development and growth as a quilt designer.

"The Internet has definitely influenced quiltmaking internationally. There are web sites with pictures of quilts, there are websites with mail order quilting supplies, there are websites that offer patterns and instructions. Maillists help us network. We can send files and pictures through email and share whatever we want. My imagination doesn't work fast enough to think of where we could go from here."

But what would she REALLY like for her computer to do for her?

"I guess I would REALLY like the computer to do my mundane repetitive household chores, plan menus, do the grocery shopping, and fold the laundry. Since I am enjoying the process of designing on the computer so much, I would like to feed fabric into a slot and have a finished quilt come out the other side. Since I couldn't begin to think up the internet before it became so universal, who knows if my pie-in-the-sky dreams couldn't someday come true?"