This is the instruction manual for the quilt designer at quiltler.com/app/library/quilts/new — the full-screen browser studio, not the iPhone app and not the mill embed on a fabric company's site. It is a quick start with the details filled in. If you only wanted the craft of planning a quilt (size, contrast, block choice), start with how to design quilts instead.
Three ways in, on purpose. This page is the reference you can share or print. The first time you open the designer, a short in-app tour walks you through pick → recolour. Replay it any time from More → Take the tour. Video walkthroughs of specific quilts and blocks live under Learn in the top bar, and on quiltler.com/learn.
On this page
- Open the designer
- The screen
- First twenty minutes
- Start from a layout
- Pick, recolour, undo
- Select, Place and Erase
- Snap, Mirror and Paste
- Colours, fabrics, cuts, blocks
- Size, grid, sashing, borders
- Saving and the free tier
- Calculator, pattern pack, More
- Keyboard shortcuts
- What to ignore on day one
- Questions
Open the designer
You need a current browser: Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. A Chromebook is fine. Nothing installs. A mouse or trackpad is more comfortable than a phone, though the same studio fits a narrow window by turning the side panels into drawers.
- A new quilt: /app/library/quilts/new. This is the URL to bookmark and to send someone.
- A quilt you already saved: My Quilts, then the design. The same editor, with the title and save status already filled in.
- From the studio home: quiltler.com/app → Design a quilt.
You do not have to sign in to start. The canvas, the starter layouts, the colour palette and undo all work as a guest. Closing the tab without saving loses the work — with one safety net, covered under Saving.
The first visit also starts the in-app tour automatically. Dismiss it if you would rather read this page with the designer open beside it; you can run the tour later from More.
The screen
The designer is full-bleed: no studio sidebar. Everything lives in five places. Learn those five and the rest of this guide is only naming what is already on screen.
| Where | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Top bar | Back to My Quilts, the quilt's title, undo/redo, search across the quilt, chat, Learn, Fabric Calculator, More, Save, refresh library, account |
| Left panel | The quilt as an object: finished size, block size, grid shape, layout, sashing, borders, overlays, quilting preview. Rulers and keyboard shortcuts sit pinned at the bottom. |
| Canvas | The quilt top, in inches. Scroll to pan. Pinch, or hold ⌘ / Ctrl while scrolling, to zoom. Space-drag also pans. Click empty canvas and drag to marquee-select. |
| Right panel | What goes onto the quilt: Colours, Fabrics, Cuts, Blocks, Suggest, Select by, Groups. The working-set picker is pinned at the bottom. |
| Bar under the quilt | The stroke in hand. Left: Select, Place, Erase, then Snap, Mirror, Paste. Middle: the brush, the selection, or a hint. Right: zoom. |
On a phone the two side panels overlay the quilt. Close them to tap the canvas; open the palette when a step asks you to pick a colour. The left-panel and right-panel buttons at the foot of each drawer hide them.
The footer of the left panel shows Designer v…. If you send a screenshot for support, that number identifies the build.
First twenty minutes
Nothing is written to your library until you press Save. The only rule worth knowing before you click is that closing an unsaved tab loses the work, unless this browser still has the guest draft (see Saving).
- Open a new design. You land on a blank throw-size canvas: 60″ × 72″, with a 12″ grid. A Start from row sits above the quilt.
- Pick a layout, or keep the blank. Rail Fence is the classic first quilt — woven bars, no pieced blocks required. Trip Around the World is rings of colour from the centre. Hide dismisses the row without changing the canvas.
- Click a square. It highlights. The bar under the quilt names the selection and shows its fabric chip.
- Click a colour on the right. The square changes. That is the whole loop, and most of designing is this. Custom mixes a colour that is not in the list. ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z takes it back.
- Open Blocks (collapsed by default, under Cuts). Switch to Classics, click a nine-patch or a star, then click a cell. Search looks through Classics, your blocks and community blocks together, whichever tab is selected.
- Glance at size on the left. Throw is the default. Baby, lap, twin, queen and king set both the finished size and a block size that divides evenly. Changing the grid later moves everything already on it, so set this before the quilt is crowded.
- Name it and Save. An unnamed quilt asks for a title on first save. Signed-out visitors are asked to create an account. Free accounts keep one saved quilt.
- Open Fabric Calculator on the top bar. Finished size and a fabric total are free. What to buy and cut is the subscription.
If you only do four things: start from Rail Fence, recolour a few bars, stamp one classic in the middle, Save. You have used the designer.
Start from a layout
The canvas opens blank. The row above it is how you swap in a finished quilt before you have made a single edit. Every option here replaces the whole canvas, which is why the row disappears the moment you recolour or place something — nothing that can discard work should stay one stray click away from work worth keeping.
The layouts are plain patchwork: whole squares and bars, no cut documents to load. That is deliberate. They are also the quilts a beginner actually sews first.
| Layout | What you get | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Blank canvas | Empty throw grid | 60″ × 72″, 12″ cells |
| Trip Around the World | Rings of colour out from the centre | 72″ square, 8″ cells |
| Rail Fence | Woven bars — the classic first quilt | 60″ × 72″, 12″ cells |
| Irish Chain | Nine patches chaining corner to corner | 60″ square, 12″ cells |
| Log Cabin | Light and dark logs, set barn-raising | 60″ × 72″, 12″ cells |
| Bargello | Colour stepping through a wave | 60″ × 72″, 6″ cells |
| Plus Quilt | Interlocking crosses | 60″ × 72″, 6″ cells |
| Chinese Coins | Stacked coins between sashing | 54″ × 72″, 6″ cells |
| Brick Path | Staggered bricks | 56″ × 72″, 8″ cells |
| Gingham | Three tones woven like a picnic cloth | 60″ square, 5″ cells |
| Postage Stamp | A scrappy wash of little squares | 54″ square, 3″ cells |
Pieced units — Ohio stars, flying geese, drunkard's path — are not in this row. They need cut geometry. Stamp them from Blocks → Classics after you have a layout, or build them with cuts. See quilt block designer and cuts and fabrics.
Pick, recolour, undo
With Select (the default, V):
- Click a piece to pick it up. Layered pieces at that spot all come along, not the rest of the cell.
- Shift-click or ⌘-click adds or removes pieces.
- Drag on empty canvas to marquee-select everything the box touches.
- ⌘A / Ctrl+A selects every piece.
- The search in the top bar finds every piece sharing a fabric, colour or cut. ⌘F focuses it, or expands the current selection to every match.
The bar under the quilt then shows a fabric chip and a cut chip. Click the fabric chip (or a swatch in Colours / Fabrics on the right) to recolour what is selected. The Custom picker is for a colour that is not in the list.
Select by, further down the right panel, groups what is already on the quilt by fabric, cut, rotation or size. One click selects every match; further clicks narrow; Shift-click adds another row without narrowing.
Undo and redo sit in the top bar, and on ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z and ⇧⌘Z or Ctrl+Y. A drag that is still in progress is a preview; releasing it becomes one undo step.
Select, Place and Erase
The three tools live under the quilt, not in the top bar, because they belong to the stroke in hand. Press V, B (or A), and E.
Select
Moves, resizes and recolours what is already there. Drag a selected piece to move it. The rotate handle turns it; hold Shift to snap the angle. Arrow keys nudge a quarter inch, ignoring snap; Shift-arrows a full inch; Alt-arrows a twentieth. R turns to the next 90° stop; Shift+R uses 45° stops.
On the selection bar: turn, flip, duplicate, delete. ⌘C copies and loads Place, ready to click down elsewhere. ⌘X cuts. ⌘D duplicates in place. Delete / Backspace removes the selection. [ and ] send backward or bring forward.
Several pieces can be saved as a block of your own from the selection bar — that opens the block builder with those pieces already on it.
Place
Puts new pieces down. The chips beside the tool show the fabric and cut a click will place; each chip opens the palette to swap it. Click a cell, or drag across several. With a copied arrangement loaded, each click pastes according to the Paste mode.
Hold Alt while dragging to ignore snapping and drop exactly where you release.
Erase
Tap a piece to take it off, or drag across several. Undo brings them back. Erase does not use the clipboard; it is not Cut.
Esc closes an open menu; otherwise it stops reframing an overlay, leaves Place or Erase, then clears the selection.
Snap, Mirror and Paste
Three menus next to the tools. Each is set once or twice a session.
Snap
Where a dropped piece locks.
- Corner — top-left lands on the grid (the usual choice on a square lattice).
- Center — the piece's centre lands on a grid intersection.
- Center line — centre lands on a line's midpoint, for triangles.
- Edge — edges line up with other blocks.
- Shape — pieces join along their outline: hexagons, diamonds, anything that tessellates.
- Off — free placement.
On a shape grid (hexagons, triangles, tumblers) the menu collapses to Cell, Shape and Off. Cell is “this piece lands in this cell.”
Mirror
Extra copies of each piece you place, reflected or turned about the quilt's centre. The hover preview shows every copy before you click.
- Single — one copy, no reflection.
- Left to right / Top to bottom — reflect across one centre line.
- Four-way — both centres, all four quadrants.
- Turn 180° / Turn 90° — copies around the centre.
Paste
Applies to click-to-place and ⌘V / Ctrl+V.
- Fit grid — copied squares land in neighbouring cells, so four squares stay four squares.
- Into square — the whole copy scales into the one cell under the pointer, nesting a mini layout inside a tile.
Colours, fabrics, cuts, blocks
The right panel is a palette, read top to bottom. Colours, Fabrics and Cuts are open by default because together they are the whole of painting a piece. Blocks, Suggest, Select by and Groups start closed.
Colours
Solid swatches: colours already on this quilt, the starter palette, and colours you have saved. Clicking a swatch paints the selection, or loads Place if nothing is selected. Shift-left/right steps through swatches from the keyboard.
Fabrics
Photo fabrics from your stash. Free accounts keep five. Photograph two or three prints you actually own — that is enough to audition a real top. Click or drag onto the quilt the same way as a colour. ⌘-left/right steps through fabrics. After you add a fabric in another tab, use the refresh button in the top bar; the designer does not watch the library live.
How large a print appears is crop + fill mode (Stretch vs Tile) + print scale. That job is documented in fabric print scale.
Cuts
A cut is a shape mask on a block — a triangle, a curve, a hexagon — not a rotary cut of cloth. It clips the rectangle and records how much of the square the shape uses, which is how the calculator knows a half-square triangle is about half a square. Apply a cut from this section, or from the cut chip on the selection bar. C turns the cut inside the selection a quarter turn; Shift+C the other way.
Stacking two full squares to fake a pieced unit looks right and doubles the yardage. One block per fabric with a cut (and its inverse) is the version that measures. The long explanation is cuts vs fabrics.
Blocks
A “block” in the Classics panel is a whole pieced square — nine-patch, flying geese, Ohio star — already drawn out of the colours and cuts above. Quiltler's own vocabulary is the other way around: each patch on the canvas is also called a block. The studio glossary is the place that distinction is nailed down.
- All — classics, yours and community together.
- Classics — the traditional catalogue, in default colours.
- Mine — blocks you made or imported.
- Community — blocks other quilters shared.
With Select and a cell picked, choosing a tile replaces that cell (keeping its rotation). With Place, or with nothing selected, it loads the brush; a click on the quilt then stamps it, one grid cell at a time. Dragging a tile onto the canvas does the same in one gesture.
Suggest
Two modes. Arrange places the colours and fabrics currently on show across the quilt (scatter, value, random, and the named strategies). Recolour shifts the solids already painted into a different scheme and leaves photo prints alone. One press is one undo step.
Groups
A named selection that survives moving and recolouring its members. Save a medallion, a border repeat, a pair of geese, and pick the group up later in one click.
Size, grid, sashing, borders
The left panel is the quilt as a physical object. Worth setting early.
Quilt size
Presets set finished size and block size together, so the grid always divides evenly:
| Preset | Finished size | Block | Grid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baby | 36″ × 48″ | 4″ | 9 × 12 |
| Lap | 50″ × 65″ | 5″ | 10 × 13 |
| Throw | 60″ × 72″ | 12″ | 5 × 6 |
| Twin bed | 66″ × 90″ | 6″ | 11 × 15 |
| Queen bed | 90″ × 108″ | 6″ | 15 × 18 |
| King bed | 104″ × 104″ | 8″ | 13 × 13 |
Custom is any width and height you type. Block width and height, or blocks-wide and blocks-high, resize the other half: changing “blocks wide” grows the quilt; changing block size keeps the quilt and changes how many fit. Finished size including borders is shown under those fields.
Configure My Quilt For Me is the size assistant: describe the quilt (hexagon EPP, on-point squares, a queen with sashing) and review a layout before it is applied. Fit to Content shrinks the canvas to the pieces already on it and moves them into the corner; borders wrap the new size.
Background is the canvas colour behind the quilt, visible through gaps and through the parts a cut takes away. It is a preview colour, not fabric, so it never appears on the shopping list.
Grid
Grid shape is square by default. Shapes that tessellate — hexagons, triangles, tumblers — can replace the square lattice. Paint a cell to fill it. Sashing needs the square grid, so it turns off on a shape grid. Borders need a clipped edge on those grids.
Layout on the square grid: rectangular rows and columns; half-drop rows (every other row offset, for triangles and tumbling blocks); half-drop columns (a brick set).
Sashing and borders
Sashing is strips between blocks. Turning it on widens each grid cell by the sashing width. Cornerstones are the small squares where those strips cross, and only get their own shopping-list row when their fabric differs from the sashing. Fill can be flat colour or a ring of fillable blocks.
Borders are rings around the outside of the canvas. You can stack several; ring 1 is innermost. They sit outside the canvas dimensions, which is why “Finished with borders” is the larger number and the one batting, backing and binding are sized against. Same choice of flat colour or pieced blocks.
Pieces parked in the working margin around the quilt — the staging shelf — are ignored by the calculator, the pattern pack and exported images. A piece counts when its centre is on the canvas.
View, overlays, quilting
Pinned at the foot of the left panel: Ruler (U), Guides from the pointer out to the rulers (G), and finished-size labels on the selection (M — a demo on the free plan, real measurements on Quilter). F or ⌘0 fits the quilt to the window. ⌘1 is actual size (an inch of quilt covers an inch of screen).
Overlays are tracing pictures placed on the quilt. Hold O to hide every overlay and see the design underneath. Drag a corner to reframe; Alt-drag stretches off proportion; Shift-drag snaps the angle.
Quilting preview paints the top as a finished, quilted object — stitching and puff — without changing the design. It is a way of looking, it is not saved, and it is a subscription feature. Editing the design turns it off.
The keyboard icon next to the version number opens the full shortcut sheet, the same list summarised below.
Saving and the free tier
The top bar shows Unsaved changes, Saving…, All changes saved, or Save failed. ⌘S / Ctrl+S saves. Save as duplicate is on the Save button's menu, and is refused while you are in someone else's library.
Designing does not require an account. While you are signed out, the current design is mirrored into this browser (one draft, not a library) after you pause typing, and offered back if you return within about thirty days. A signed-in session that still has a very recent guest draft — typically because sign-in interrupted you — will offer to keep it. Saving to an account empties that drawer.
Free accounts keep one saved quilt and five fabrics. The canvas itself is never gated: you can design as much as you like. The wall appears when you try to keep a second design, upload a sixth fabric, open the cutting plan, share, or sell. After a plan ends, the oldest remaining items stay open; newer ones stay stored until you subscribe again. Honest limits: free quilt design software.
Saved quilts sync to the iPhone and iPad apps on the same account. The designer opens library links in a new tab so this canvas is not replaced.
Calculator, pattern pack, More
Fabric Calculator earns a permanent seat on the top bar. It is the door to what to buy and cut. Finished size and a fabric total are free. Per-fabric yardage, backing, batting, binding, the cutting chart and true-scale templates are the subscription. Overlapping pieces are counted twice — More → Check overlapping pieces selects them so you can space them out. Pieces on the working margin are left out of the count. Standalone calculators, if you arrived from search: fabric, backing, batting, binding.
The chat bubble next to the calculator is support. It is parked on the bar so it cannot cover the canvas.
More
- Take the tour — the same first-run walkthrough, on demand. Also on this menu: this guide, in a new tab.
- Pattern Pack — cutting & assembly — the sew-from-it PDF: cutting sizes, rotary instructions, assembly order, true-scale templates. Styled in a live pack designer before it prints. Subscription.
- Visualise this quilt — photograph the design as a finished quilt in a scene you describe. A paid add-on on top of a subscription; web only.
- Progress & finished photos — photographs you take as you make the quilt, for the community page and the pattern page.
- Download image — a picture of the quilt. Free, with a Quiltler credit; subscribe to write your own or leave it off.
- Make video — a short clip of the quilt for Instagram, TikTok or YouTube Shorts. Needs a saved design you can share.
- Share to community / Send to someone — public page, or a private send by email. Subscription. Send-to-someone is web only.
- Record session / Replay studio / Generate replay from design — a making-of of the edits, or a reconstructed making-of from the finished top.
Keyboard shortcuts
The full sheet is the keyboard icon at the bottom of the left panel. Every row there is a key the editor actually handles. The ones worth learning first:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| V | Select |
| B or A | Place |
| E | Erase |
| Esc | Close a menu, then leave Place/Erase, then clear the selection |
| ⌘S / Ctrl+S | Save |
| ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| ⇧⌘Z or Ctrl+Y | Redo |
| ⌘A | Select all |
| ⌘C / ⌘X / ⌘V / ⌘D | Copy (loads Place), cut, paste, duplicate |
| R / Shift+R | Turn 90° / 45° |
| C / Shift+C | Turn the cut inside the piece |
| F or ⌘0 | Fit the quilt to the window |
| U / G / M | Rulers / guides / size labels |
| Wheel / Space-drag | Pan. ⌘-wheel zooms |
On Windows and Chromebook, read Ctrl wherever this page says ⌘.
What to ignore on day one
You can ignore the Cut Creator, custom blocks, half-drop grids, pieced sashing, overlays, quilting preview, session recording, the visualiser, and selling on the marketplace. Those are real tools. None of them is required to finish a first plan. The first-run tour is short on purpose: pick, recolour, maybe stamp. Everything else waits in the same panels.
You can also ignore Electric Quilt. Quiltler will not open EQ8 project files; recreate a layout if you ever switch. The comparison can wait until you care: EQ8 alternative.
If the vocabulary (block vs piece vs cut vs coverage) starts to slide, keep the studio glossary open. If you wanted the craft rather than the software, quilting for beginners and how to make a quilt are the sewing guides.
Stuck in the designer? The chat bubble on the top bar reaches us. Account → Show tutorials again resets the in-app tours if you skipped them and want another pass.