Quilt Path Tutorial Workaround on avoiding objects The purpose of this tutorial is to give you a way to quilt a design and avoid an area that you do not want to be quilted. For instance, quilting a background design, but not quilting applique. There are several ways to get the initial design into Quilt Path. You could use the record feature to trace the design with your longarm, take a digital picture and use it as background in PatternCAD or draw the design with your stylus. If you are trying to trace applique, tracing it with the longarm would mean that you have the sizing correct. However you decide to do it, you will need to get the shape of what you want to avoid in the design side of the program.

In this case we will be using a Heart that I created.

Once it is in PatternCAD you will want it put it onto the back layer. Tap the Swap button. You will now it is the back when the lines turn blue.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

Now use Select Pattern to bring in the quilting design that you would like to have in the background. I chose Hilbarc which is a stock design in Quilt Path.

My heart is six inches wide and Hilbarc came in the same size. I will need to increase the size of the design so that it fills the 8 inch block that my heart is floating in on my quilt top.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

In the Pattern- Edit screen tap on the Select button and then the Select All button. This will select all of nodes for the top layer, as seen above. If you do not see the red circles, you need to active your nodes which can be done by tapping the Nodes button on the top left of your screen. The node circles are solid red when they are selected. We can now size the design.

You will want to make sure to lock the aspect ratio of your design before resizing it. You can do this by clicking on the lock button on the Size screen. If the lock looks like it is open, the design will only resize in one direction, so if you tell it to get longer, it will, but it will not get wider at the same time. Since we are working on a square and we do not want to skew our design, we want to lock the aspect ratios so that any change we make will cause both the length and width of the design to change together. That way we can enlarge and/or reduce and not worry about changing the shape.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

Hilbarc is now covering and 8 by 8 inch area. Now I need to get rid of the lines at are inside the heart shape. To do this we will be using The Pattern – Edit – Select screen.

Tip: You can select a group of nodes by drawing a box around them with your stylus or mouse. If you did not Unselect All first, you can fix the issue by using the Select Inverse button.

The idea is to only select lines that start and stop inside the heart for now. Lines that cross over the heart will be used later in the tutorial. Select a group like the one in the screenshot above that all start and stop inside the heart, by tapping Unselect All and then drawing a box around the nodes you want to select.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

Tapping the Delete button will delete the nodes selected. Continue selecting and deleting nodes until all the lines that both start and stop within the heart are deleted.

The next step is to deal with the lines that cross over the heart. Both the one on the top right that would quilt into the shape and all the lines that have a single end inside the shape. The line that will cross over the top right side of the heart can easily be reshaped to quilt just outside the heart, without changing the shape so much that it will be noticeable. To do this select both ends of that line.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

A blue square will appear. To reshape the line you will want to tap on that square and drag it to slightly about the line. If the square wants to jump up to the next grid mark, you have the Snap to Grid option selected. That button is on the right side of the screen. Toggle it off and on and see how it effects moving the line. You can always hit the back button to erase anything you have done, so there is no worry in playing with the options and learning what they do.

Now we will select the individual nodes that are inside the heart. If you tap on it and keep your stylus on the screen you can drag the node to where it needs to end at the heart. If you are using a mouse, click and hold the button down to drag the node. Do this to every line that is ending inside the heart. We will deal with the nodes that are attached to two nodes outside the heart next.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

In the screenshot above, the nodes selected are each attached to two nodes. If you were to try to move one of these nodes it would skew the design. Additional nodes will need to be inserted so that we can deal with each line crossing over the heart independently. Select the nodes that that need to have nodes inserted and then tap the Insert button on the right of the screen .

That will give you the extra node on each side that you need to work with these lines. Select and drag the nodes like early so that the lines end on the heart. You will notice while you are doing this that a line will be left inside the heart.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com

Select the nodes on both ends of those lines.

Now you have a choice, you can merge the layers together, which would mean that both the heart and the background would be quilted or you can save just the top layer. Either way there will be jumpstitches. To avoid this lines would need to be traced around the heart to join each of the elements. This tutorial was designed to teach you how to remove the stitching lines inside the heart. There is more information on drawing designs, reordering stitching lines and optimizing at www.ThreadWaggle.com.

Angela Clark

www.ThreadWaggle.com