Loes van der Heijden – Creating Your Own Quilting Patterns with Art and Stitch
Do you dream of creating art quilts that use beautiful patterns but feel you lack free motion skills? Your wish can come true with the new, easy to use Art and Stitch software program, a stand-alone digitizing software for longarm quilters and machine embroiderers. With Art and Stitch you can draw your own quilt patterns from scratch, or trace a background image and turn that vector artwork into quilt patterns for your computerized longarm system. You can edit existing patterns (quilt patterns, but also embroidery designs), and you can setup full quilt layouts, too. The computerized longarm machine will stitch out your design for you! Art and Stitch is 4 programs in one: vector drawing, digitizing, conversion and layout software! Loes van der Heijden shows us how using the software she and husband Theo developed.
Art and Stitch – artnstitch.com – available by mail order from her e-store.
Week 1
Jodie’s guest Loes van der Heijden shows how to design your own patterns for longarm quilting using her software program Art and Stitch. You really can design and stitch out your first patterns in just ten minutes! What you do is load the software onto your laptop computer, draw your design, save it on a USB stick then insert the stick into your computerized longarm machine. The machine will stitch out the design like magic. Creating your own patterns is very doable for everyone….you don’t have to know how to draw. The program works on all major computerized quilt systems.
Week 2
Loes van der Heijden proves you don’t need to know how to draw to design your quilting pattern on Art and Stitch. She asks Jodie to scribble a line on a triangle of paper. Loes takes a digital photo of this doodle, inserts the camera card into the computer, and opens the photo as a backdrop in Art and Stitch. She traces the doodle and within minutes that doodle becomes a beautiful quilt pattern, just by using the Magic Square function in the program.
Watch videos showing Art and Stitch functions at artnstitch.com
Short Takes on Longarm Quilting with Vicki Hoth
Vicki is all about doodling and shows items that are readily available to help you loosen up and practice doodling for longarm quilting A standard sketch pad is an easy way to doodle as time permits and save those doodles all in one place. A boogie board LCD writing tablet and a gel board are both good places to doodle and if you like what you’ve done, take a digital picture. Toy magnet boards, quilter’s preview paper, any plastic sheet like a sheet protector, a dry erase or chalk board are all good items to use. With Golden Threads quilting paper, you can draw to scale, pin to the quilt and free motion quilt right through the paper.
- Boogie Board LCD Writing Tablet available at Brookstone – brookstone.com
- Gel Boards available at Amazon – amazon.com
- Quilters’s Preview Paper available at Handi Quilter – handiquilter.com
- Golden Threads Quilting Paper available at Golden Threads – goldenthreads.com
Week 3
There are many fun tools in Art and Stitch that help make beautiful and creative quilt patterns. Loes van der Heijden shows how to fill shapes with motifs with just a click of a button. These motifs are a great alternative to stippling. Automatic cross hatching is a breeze. A person needs no skills to begin using this software. Your skills will develop as you use the program. There are lots of videos on the Art and Stitch web site showing the program in action. Plus, Loes and her staff teach classes all around the country.