Tech Sunday - Creating Egg and Dart in Quilt Path

My friend Karen was trying to figure out how to use a panto that is two rows that are mirrored.   While she was using a commercial pattern, it works the same as using a semi circle to create egg and dart.

Quilt Path comes with a semi circle, so now I can have quilt path do one of my very favorite sashings!

 From the Home screen, under Design & Create, click on Pattern.  This will take you into PatternCAD.

Click the Select Pattern Button.  Click on the Continuous Line button.  Choose SemiCircle.

Once the semicircle is on your screen, click on the Draw button under Mirror and then click on the Horizontal button

You now have the image you are looking for, a single egg and dart.  To get rid of the horizontal line click on Apply Mirror.

 Now all you need to do is save your new design.  If you did not apply the mirror you will get a message asking you if you want to save the reflection.  You just say yes and it will apply the mirror at that time.

Tech Sunday - Quilt Path Last Row Issue Fixes

Every longarm quilter feels joy when the bottom border of a quilt is in the quilting area on their frame.  I just love know that I am almost done. I want nothing to crush that happiness.  

Occasionally, I am just having one of those days, when I did not get the length of the quilt quite right.  It is not a huge problem if the quilt is shorter then what I entered.  I just let it quilt a little bit lower onto the batting, or use the skew corners buttons.  But what if the quilt is 4 inches longer? If it is close, I can still use the skew buttons, but that will warp the panto and it is not always aesthetically pleasing.  (Read that as it would look so bad I could never let it leave my studio.)  

I basically have a choice here, waste a little bit more of the backing fabric or having the quilt not look the way I want it to. I am going for the quilt itself looking right every time.  We request the extra backing so that we can use it if needed.  This is one of those times!

This is one of those times that the PS Placement feature comes in handy.  This is where you can trick Quilt Path into quilting an extra row. I linked to the post about how this feature is used above, so I am just going to jump in and tell you what I do.  I make sure that I have my alignment spot marked, so that I can use it after I change rows.  Then I go in and click the minus button, which lets me re-quilt the previous row.  The Placement Map will still show the original number of rows, but my quilt will have an additional row added on to it.   

This normally means that I am not quilting the fill-in row at the bottom, the last row (when it is a partial row) or that the last row is quilting several inches off the bottom of the quilt.   It is all about getting the actual quilt to look right.   Remember, you don't have to quilt it just because it on the screen. Even if there are more rows showing when the quilt is quilted, just tap the big red X and close Quilt Motion.  

Tech Sunday - Changing Rows in Quilt Path

This is for the times that you accidentally hit that little red X at the top left of the Quilt Motion screen and end up back in Quilt Cad.  I still do it every once and a while.  I think I am in the optimize screen and then bad words happen and I have to click on Send by Row again.  In future posts I will talk about how to realign, but for this one I am going on the assumption that you have marked the center and that mark is just sitting there waiting for you to hit the centering button on the placement screen.

Once Quilt Motion comes back up, the design is in the top left of the Safe Area.  If you do not have partial rows on this quilt you could just move the machine to the center, tap the center button and keep going.  In a perfect world it would not matter that you actually had just finished the 3 row of 10.  But in my world it does matter.  Because I like undulating pantos and there is almost always a partial row at the top of my quilts.  

On the bottom right of the Quilt Motion screen you will see what looks like a white information box.  Yes, it has been there the whole time you have owned Quilt Path.  It was not obvious to me that it is actually a button.  But you will notice that the last sentence says "Tap here to view Pattern Map".

Once you tap it, it shows which row you are on.

Right now I am on the first row, but let's say before I closed out, I had just finished the third row.  If I click the plus button it will move the rows down the screen. Once the forth row is highlighted, I can move my machine to the center mark, tap the center button and I am ready to quilt.  

This gets a little more confusing when you have an undulating panto that has a fill-in row at the top.  To understand what the placement screen is going to do, I want you to think about how Quilt Path would actually quilt this.  It is going to quilt the first row and then quilt the fill in row above it.  Then go to the second full row.  When you tap the plus button, it will do the same thing, it will highlight the fill-in row.  When you tap the plus button again, the second full row will become highlighted.

The minus button takes you the opposite way, or back up the quilt.  And remember, if you go in to see what this screen does, and then want to start quilting, you will want to use the placements buttons to make sure that your are aligned correctly.  

Tech Sunday - Move to Start

One of my favorite features in Quilt Path is the Move to Start Point button.  This what I do instead of using the Pull Bobbin feature and I use it many other ways, which I will discuss in upcoming posts. This feature is located in the Toolbox option in Quilt Motion. 

The button is right at the top of Tool Box.   

I use this on every pass.  I love that I can move my machine close to where I think the pass will start, choose the Move to Start Point button and the machine magically moves right to where it needs.  It has gotten to be a game to see how close I can get the machine to the right place.  Then I do a quick needle up/down on my machine, hold onto the top thread tail and slide my snips under the hopping foot which brings the bottom thread to the top.  This is just so much faster then the bobbin pull feature, because the machine only moves once.

I am not saying that the Pull Bobbin feature does not have it's place. It is just not a feature that I use often.  I love that there are options on how to do the same thing and get things to work better in my world.