Scoop: App Attack!

Don’t know about you, but here at GenQ HQ, we are all glued to our smartphones. How else would we check up on Facebook, email our moms, tweet what we’re having for lunch and sext our spouses (okay, none of us has done that. Yet.) if we didn’t have such marvelous devices to make it possible? One of us even has an iPad and lords it over the rest of us because she can play Angry Birds without going blind.

And naturally, being quilters, we all have loads of quilt-related apps on our various devices, and we’re always looking for more. Even apps that aren’t specifically meant for quilters can be useful, and we like ‘em even better when they’re free. So for those of you who are curious about what apps to get, we’ve done some research for you. In this first of a three-part series, we review five popular quilting apps and tell you exactly what they do, what they don’t do, how much they cost, and whether we think you should download them.

Quick and Easy Quilt Block Tool
C&T Publishing
$3.99
iPhone, iPad

This comes from our buds at C&T Publishing, the company that produces so many of the quilt and sewing books we love. This app started its life as a fan deck that C&T has published for years. It became an app about two years ago and was one of the first quilt-specific apps in the market. A compendium of 102 traditional quilt blocks, this app shows you rotary cutting diagrams for each block, including the sizes and yardage you will need to create each block in 5 sizes (4”, 6”, 8”, 10”, and 12”). You can view the block library in a list or grid format and select favorites for quick review later. There’s a guide for using the instructions as well as a handy bunch of tips that could be very useful for a novice quilter.

Yay or Nay? While this app has no interactive or customizable options, it’s a great help for re-sizing blocks—as long as you are making one of the included patterns. It’s also fabulous if you like to design on the go and can inspire some great quilts from these classic designs.  The interface is clear and easy to understand, and we consider this one of the best apps out there.

 

Fabric Stash
Blueshift Software
$4.99
iPhone, iPad

If you are one of those anal retentive types who likes to catalog your spice rack and index your back issues of TV Guide (yes, we’re that old), then you may be in the market for an app like this. Organize your stash by taking a photo of each fabric and labeling it according to name, manufacturer, line, color, weight, size, location and cost, which you can then use to sort the entire stash. You can pull the fabric image from your photo library or take a pic on the spot. It also has a wish list, for including fabrics you’d like to get later, listings for projects and non-fabric items as well.

Yay or Nay? Some of the drop-down menus don’t work, and ours crashed every time we tried to enter a new project. But having swatches of all your yardage and fats on hand is wonderful when shopping for coordinating fabrics. Once they get all the kinks out, this will be a must-have app.

 

Quilting Calc
Robert Kaufman Fabrics
Free
iPhone, iPad, Android

Also calling itself The Quilter’s Little Helper, this set of calculators deals with the most basic math of quilt-making: how much fabric do I need and how much can I cut from what I’ve got? It will help you determine yardage for backing and batting, binding, borders (mitered and non) and “pieces to yardage” which will tell you how much fabric you need to cut a certain number of fixed size pieces. Additionally, it will calculate set-in and corner triangles, all the dimensions of the pieces of a square-in-a-square based upon either the size of the center square or the size of the finished block, and will calculate how many fixed size pieces you can get out of a particular piece of yardage. As of this writing it will not calculate the number of mojitos it will take to finish a king-size Cathedral Windows quilt, but no doubt that will be included in a future update.

Yay or Nay? The calculators work well and are easy to understand, thanks to detailed instructions and explanations for each one. There are some buttons at the bottom that apparently convert the measurements from inches to metric and back, but they don’t actually seem to work. This may be part of a future update or a bug, but we didn’t mind not being able to convert. Canadians and others overseas might see it differently. However, it’s a free app, so we say go for it.

 

Easy Quilt
Technical Made Easy, LLC
$2.99
iPhone, iPad

This is quilting-for-beginners condensed into a small app. It has an overview of quilting tools, from needles to ironing boards, basic info about what to look for in fabric, thread and batting and the choices available for each, a small library of instructions for getting started on your first quilt, and a few short (like, just a few seconds short) how-to videos.

Yay or Nay? A quilter with any experience under his or her belt will probably not find anything of use here. This is information so basic and so condensed that it could only serve as a momentary diversion for someone who is thinking of learning to quilt and wants to know what she’s getting into before she starts. And once a newbie is ready to apply needle to fabric, he’s gonna want much more detailed instructions than this offers.

 

BlockFab
Mary Kay Podlecki
Free
iPhone, iPad

One of the few design apps out there, Block Fab offers a library of about 70 traditional block designs, and will tell you how much fabric you need to create any number of those blocks at whatever size you choose. You can then see your block in layouts with and without sashing, alternating with plain blocks and paired up with one other block. Layouts can be viewed in one of 19 different colorways and you can also choose a deep or a bright scrappy look.

Yay or Nay? While this app is certainly fun to play with, we have doubts that many people would end up creating a quilt based upon one of its design results. Even though there are customizable options, such as the colorways, you’re still just choosing from a limited selection. Still, it’s free, so you can’t beat the price, and anything that lets us play with pattern and color for free is a good deal to us.

 

In our next installment, we’ll look at sewing and embroidery apps (ones that aren’t specifically intended for quilters) and the last installment will cover apps that aid or boost creativity.–Megan Dougherty