 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Quilt-Pro 2 Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
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Interested in patchwork and quilting? If so, you'll find Quilt-Pro 2 takes
all the drudgery out of the preparation stage. It's fascinating to watch quilts taking shape before your
eyes, and you can experiment with different designs and colours in a very few clicks. Once you've settled on
a design, Quilt-Pro tells you exactly how much fabric you'll need, and even prints out the templates for your
patches.
Quilt-Pro ships with an extensive library of ready-made blocks, border and sash designs, fabrics and quilt
stencils. So, if you're not too confident about your design skills, it is easy to base your masterpiece on
existing library elements. If you're more adventurous, you can customise the library designs or create your
own designs from scratch. And if you haven't used a computer before, not to worry; Quilt-Pro's User's Manual
includes a tutorial that assumes no prior computer knowledge and describes each step in precise detail.
First, some terminology
Quilts consist of blocks--usually squares--joined together, with each block comprising a series of "patches"
in different fabrics. Individual blocks may be bordered by "sashes", and the whole bounded by "borders".
Quilting stitches--either outline, or decorative hearts, flowers and so on--secure the quilt top to the
backing fabric and inner batting.
How Quilt-Pro works
The first step in creating your quilt is to design the blocks. Quilt-Pro has a nice range of drawing tools,
encompassing squares, circles, hexagons, polygons, diamonds and so on, which work just like standard drawing
tools. Better, actually, as you can also rotate shapes while you're drawing them. Patch Guidelines help you
organise the patches within each block, and a snap-to-grid feature ensures your patches align exactly. When
you're happy with your block layouts, you can colour in the patches with either solid colours or fabric
swatches. If you wish, you can apply quilt stencils on top of each block (to represent the quilting
stitches).
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When you've completed your block designs, you
lay out your quilt--decide on the arrangement and number of blocks, whether to include sashes and borders, if
so how many, and so on. Once you've done this, you can continue experimenting with different colours, fabrics
and block orientations. If you choose, Quilt-Pro will colour corresponding patches in all similar blocks at
the same time. Change the fabric in one patch, for example, and the fabric in the corresponding patches
changes too. Similarly, rotate one block, and all similar blocks rotate. You can turn this feature off, if
you wish, so that your manipulations affect only individual patches or blocks. Once you're satisfied with
your quilt, Quilt-Pro calculates how much of each kind of fabric you'll need, and prints out templates
(including seam allowances) for your patches and quilt stencils for the quilting stitches.
You can use Quilt-Pro to design appliqued quilts--in which you sew patches in designs such as flowers, leaves
and hearts onto a background fabric. There is a range of ready-made appliqued blocks, or you can create your
own shapes using Quilt-Pro's Bezier tool. Once you've joined Bezier curves into closed shapes, you fill them
with colours and fabrics and so on, just like standard quilts. Unlike standard patches, applique patches can
overlap each other, and Quilt-Pro has a series of stacking commands, so you can change the order in which
patches lie on top of each other.
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Assessment
I'm very impressed with Quilt-Pro. It's amazingly easy to use and really does take much of the pain out of
quilt designing. Within an hour of starting the tutorial, I had my quilt design completed, knew what kind and
colour of fabrics to use, how much fabric to buy and had the templates in hand for my patches. All I had left
to do was to purchase the fabrics, then start cutting them up and piecing them together.
Quilt-Pro is one of the neatest programs I've reviewed; it works beautifully, takes all the hard work out of
quilt designing, saves on material wastage and is fun to use.
Reprinted from the November 1998 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
