Smart Phones and Quilting

Okay, I admit it. I. am. a. geek. I love technology! It probably takes me away from sewing/quilting WAY too much, but I still love it! This weekend it made my life just a little bit easier!

I have a droid smart phone. It’s an older one but still quite a step up from my Krazer! I couple of weeks ago I downloaded and app from the App Store that is put out by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Quilters Paradise. It’s called QuiltingCalc. QuiltingCalc has an assortment of quilting calculators to help you figure out all sorts of problems encountered when sewing.

It’s available for the droid or the iphone. Here’s a rundown of what it’s got:

  1. Fabric Measurement – this calculator converts between inches, yards in decimal form, and yards in fractional form
  2. Backing and Batting – it determines how much yardage from a bolt of fabric is needed to make a backing for a quilt, it can also be used to determine how much batting you need for your quilt.
  3. Piece Count – determines the number of fixed-sized pieces of fabric that may be cut from a larger piece of fabric.
  4. Pieces to Yardage Area – determines how much fabric is needed in order to cut a given number of fixed-size pieces.
  5. Binding – here you can calculate the amount of fabric required to bind your quilt based on the quilts dimensions and the binding strip width.
  6. Border Yardage – shows the amount of fabric required to create borders, based on the quilt’s dimensions (width and length) and the width of the borders.
  7. Square-in-a-Square – works out all the key dimensions of a square-in-a-square block using either the finished inside square length or the finished outside square length as the starting point.
  8. Set in and Corner Triangle – determines the size of the square piece you’ll need to cut in order to create both unfinished set-in triangles and unfinished corner triangles, based on the size of the finished square.

I used the Set-in and Corner Triangle calculator this weekend while on a quilt retreat – I hadn’t thought about what size I would need before I left, so I just brought a lot of fabric with me! Of course I could have just made larger than needed square and cut them in half, but then I would have had bias edges on my quilt. Instead I used the calculator and it told me I needed 9 3/4″ square cut into quarters, which would then give me the straight grain on the edge! Loved it!

One of the best things about QuiltCalc is IT’S FREE! So thank you Robert Kaufman Fabrics for making my life a little easier!!

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