Compu-Quilter

Designing what you want stitched on the quilt is the most important part of the “quilting” of your quilt.  It takes time and creativity to determine how to enhance the beautiful and often complex piecing you have done.

Once the design has been laid out, it is necessary to determine which tools will be employed to carry out this design on your masterpiece.  Rulers, templates, thread colors and thicknesses, and patterns are all part of the tools used to do this work. 

The Compu-Quilter* (CQ) is a computer assist component added on to the A-1 Elite. It allows us to recreate the artwork that has been designed on paper and stitch it on your quilt.  It brings a high level of accuracy and flexibility to our work.

As with any tool, sometimes it is appropriate and sometimes it is not.  We, at Elegant Counterpanes, suggest the following items as guidelines for us to help you choose when our computer assisted work is appropriate and when our expert freehand work is best.

Pantographs, borders and sashing as well as single and repeatable motifs are terrific areas to consider the CQ work  Pantographs are accurately spaced and can be scaled up or down to fit your requests.  Motifs and block patterns can be scaled, flipped (right-left-up-down) and angled from 0-360 degrees to match your quilt design.  .

Another great feature of CQ is the ability to create custom patterns.  Through our custom digitizing process we are able to recreate custom designs for you that we can then stitch.  (see Miata example).  The restrictions are few and the advantages are many.  The CQ has the ability to add wonderful flair to a quilt, that if you choose, may then be further enhanced with additional freehand quilting.

There are also times when use of the CQ may not be appropriate for your quilt.  Some quilt shows still separate quilts with computer stitched designs into different categories.  You may wish to check show rules ahead of time if you are planning to show your quilt in a professional venue.  Please let us know ahead of time if this is an issue for your project. 

From a simply economical viewpoint, overall patterns (other than pantographs) and stippling or meandering can be less expensive when done by hand.  When requesting work such as background stippling around motifs, interpretive designs, echoing and landscape designs, it is faster and easier for us to  tuck the stitches in and around your pieces by working freehand rather than program the CQ computer to do these tasks.  So at these times we would not use the CQ program.

Elegant Counterpanes can offer you a wide variety of possibilities in both design and execution.  We will work with you to determine what you would like, and what would work best with your artwork and your plans for your masterpiece.

*Compu-Quilter is designed and manufactured by S&D Stitches, Inc.