Quiltler Studio Glossary

This is the vocabulary of the app itself, not of the craft. If you are after batting, bias, fat quarters and WOF, the quilting glossary covers those. What follows is what Quiltler means by a block, a cut, a fabric and everything that flows from them into your yardage.

Designs and the canvas

The document you are working in and the surface the quilt is laid out on.

Quilt (design)

One saved document: a title, the canvas and everything on it. My Quilts lists them, and opening one takes you into the designer. The words quilt and design are used interchangeably — a quilt is the saved copy of a design.

Canvas

The quilt top itself, measured in inches. Its width and height are the finished size before borders, and they include the space sashing is drawn into. Borders sit outside the canvas, which is why a bordered quilt finishes larger than its canvas dimensions.

Finished size

The whole quilt including every border ring — what you would measure on the finished object. The layout panel shows it under the canvas dimensions as “Finished with borders”, and it is what batting, backing and binding are sized against. Canvas width and height are the smaller number, borders excluded.

Background

The canvas colour behind the quilt, visible through any gaps between blocks and through the parts a cut takes away when nothing sits behind. It is a preview colour, not fabric, so it never appears on the shopping list.

Grid

The repeating cell size the canvas is divided into, set by block width and height (6″ × 6″ to start). It guides placement and snapping, and when sashing is on, the cell grows by the sashing width. Blocks are not forced onto it — the grid is a ruler, not a container.

Layout

How the grid cells are offset from each other. Rectangular is plain rows and columns. Half-drop rows offsets every other row by half a block width, for triangles and tumbling blocks; half-drop columns offsets every other column by half a block height, for a brick-like set.

Working margin

The area around the quilt in the designer where blocks can be parked while you work. A block counts as part of the quilt when its centre is on the canvas, so anything parked outside is ignored by the fabric calculator, the pattern pack and exported images. It is a staging shelf, not part of the quilt.

Sashing

Strips of fabric drawn between blocks to frame and separate them. Turning it on widens each grid cell by the sashing width and adds its own row to the shopping list, measured as continuous strips across the quilt rather than as blocks.

Cornerstone

A small square set where sashing strips cross. It needs sashing to be on, and it only gets its own row on the shopping list when its fabric differs from the sashing fabric.

Border

A ring of fabric around the outside of the canvas. You can stack several rings, each with its own width and fabric; ring 1 is innermost. Borders are added on top of the canvas size and are what batting, backing and binding are measured against.

Layer

A named stacking level that blocks can be assigned to, with its own visibility, lock, opacity and blend mode. Blocks on higher layers draw over lower ones — which is how a cut piece shows the fabric behind it.

Block group

A saved, named selection of blocks. It stores which blocks belong to it rather than a snapshot of them, so the group survives moving and recolouring its members and can be reselected in one click later.

Blocks and cuts

The two terms most worth getting right. A Quiltler block is a single piece of one fabric, and a cut is what makes that piece a shape other than a rectangle.

Block

One rectangle of one fabric, placed at a position and size in inches. It is a single patch, not a traditional pieced block: a Nine-Patch in Quiltler is nine blocks, and a half-square triangle unit is two blocks with triangle cuts. Blocks float freely, so they can overlap, rotate and sit off the grid.

Cut

A shape mask applied to a block — a triangle, a curve, a hexagon, anything drawn in the Cut Creator. It clips the block to that shape so whatever is behind shows through the rest, and it records what fraction of the block's rectangle the shape covers. That fraction is the only way the fabric calculator learns a piece uses part of a square rather than all of it. See cuts and fabrics for the full explanation.

Coverage

The fraction of a block's rectangle its cut actually consumes, from 0 to 1, shown as a percentage in the calculator. A half-square triangle is about 50%; a small centred circle might be 20%. It is measured from the cut's real geometry, so it is exact rather than estimated. A block with no cut is 100%.

Applied cut

The link between one block and one cut, including how far the shape is rotated inside the block. Rotating the cut turns the shape within the block; rotating the block turns both together.

Cut Creator

The editor where you draw a cut shape. It saves the outline and works out the coverage fraction from the geometry, so every cut you draw is measurable by the calculator.

Cut library

Your saved cut shapes, reachable from Cuts in the studio bar. Cuts are reusable across every quilt, so a triangle drawn once can be stamped anywhere.

Inverse cut

The complementary shape to a cut — the part of the square the first cut leaves behind. The Invert toggle in the Cut Creator makes one: it keeps the block everywhere the shapes are not. Pairing a cut with its inverse is how you build a two-fabric unit that measures correctly, instead of stacking two full blocks.

Stacked blocks

Several full blocks piled in one grid cell to fake a pieced unit. It looks right on screen but declares that much cloth, so the calculator counts every one in full — the usual reason yardage comes out two to four times too high. The fix is one block per fabric with a cut applied.

Fabrics and colour

What fills a block, and how a printed fabric is made to look its real size.

Fabric

What fills a block: a flat colour or a square photo of real cloth. On the shopping list, a fabric is one purchasable row — every block sharing the same fill totals into it, so twelve blocks of one red is a single row, and two different reds are two.

Photo fabric

A fabric made from a photograph, cropped square when you add it. There is no separate print-repeat setting on the photo itself; how large the print appears is decided by the crop, the fill mode and the print scale. See fabric print scale.

Library

Everything you design with, reachable from Fabrics in the studio bar and shared with the iOS app. Three tabs: Fabrics, Colours and Presets. Library fabrics are available in every quilt and keep the name you gave them, which is the name that reaches the shopping list.

Preset

A named shortlist of fabrics, colours or cuts to work from — a palette for one quilt, say. It stores which items belong to it rather than copies of them, so editing a fabric updates every preset it appears in.

Fill mode (Stretch / Tile)

How a fabric photo fills a block that is not the same shape as the photo. Stretch scales one copy to fill the block, so a 12″ block shows one giant motif. Tile repeats the photo, which is what you want for a print at true scale.

Print scale

How many inches of real fabric the photo shows across, used as the tile pitch so the print renders at life size. Larger numbers make the motif smaller. Setting it switches the block to Tile; leaving it at 0 repeats the photo once per grid cell. The same measurement can be recorded once on a library fabric, where it is called Print width.

Palette

The set of colours offered when painting blocks. Colours carry a name as well as a hex value, and that name is what appears on the shopping list — so naming them well makes the pattern easier to shop from. See colour theory for choosing them.

Working in the designer

The tools in the toolbar and the panels either side of the canvas.

Select tool

Click to select a block, drag to move it, or drag on empty canvas to marquee-select several. Keyboard shortcut V.

Paint tool

Pick a fabric, cut and rotation in the side panel, then click to place blocks or drag across existing ones to stamp on top of them. Keyboard shortcut B.

Stamp

What the paint tool puts down, configured by three toggles — fabric, cut and rotation. A toggle turned off means the stamp leaves that property of the block underneath alone, so you can recolour without disturbing the cuts, or recut without disturbing the colours.

Snap

Where a dragged block locks as you drop it. Corner snaps the top-left to the grid, Center snaps the block's centre to grid intersections, Center line snaps to line-segment midpoints for triangles, Edge aligns with other blocks, and Off places freely.

Inspector

The right-hand panel: what is selected, and the fabric, cut and arrange controls for it. The left panel holds the quilt-wide settings — size, grid, sashing and borders.

Arrange

Aligning, distributing and reordering the selection, including which block sits in front when two overlap — Front, Back and one step either way.

Select by

Grouping the blocks already on the quilt by fabric, cut, rotation or size, so one click selects every block that matches. The quickest way to recolour one fabric everywhere it appears.

Fill empty cells

Drops a block into every empty grid cell at the current block size and fill — the fastest way to lay a background before painting over it.

Designer

The full-screen quilt editor itself, as distinct from the pack designer that styles the printed pattern. Opening a quilt takes you into the designer.

Fabric calculation

The calculator adds up the area of every piece your design declares, then converts that area into length off a bolt. It measures the pieces, not the picture.

Fabric calculator

The yardage report for a saved quilt: a row per fabric, plus backing, batting and binding. It counts only the blocks on the quilt, so anything parked in the working margin is left out. Try the standalone fabric calculator.

Assumptions

The settings the calculation runs on — seam allowance, usable fabric width, waste allowance, batting and backing overhang, binding method and rounding. They are printed into the pattern pack so anyone sewing from it knows what the numbers assumed.

Piecing fabric

The total yardage for the quilt top: every block fabric plus sashing, cornerstones and borders. Backing, batting and binding are counted separately, because they are bought differently.

Shopping list

The fabric rows of the calculation, one per purchasable fabric, sorted by how much you need. Each row totals every block sharing that fill and breaks down into variations.

Variation

A group within one fabric's row sharing the same block size and cut — for example “6″ square, triangle cut, 12 blocks”. Rotation is deliberately ignored, because a turned piece needs the same cloth as an unturned one.

Seam allowance

The margin added around every piece for sewing, ¼″ by default. Each piece therefore grows by ½″ in both directions before its area is counted — that is the cloth that disappears into the seams.

Waste factor

A percentage added to the total to cover cutting waste and mistakes, 15% by default. Applied after seam allowances, before the conversion to yards.

Shrinkage allowance

An optional extra percentage for fabric that will be prewashed. Off unless you turn it on in the measurement settings.

Fabric width (WOF)

The usable width of the bolt the yardage is calculated against, 42″ by default. Total area is divided by this width to get a length in yards, then rounded up to the next ⅛ yard, because that is how fabric is sold.

Backing

The fabric behind the quilt, measured to the finished size including borders plus an overhang of 4″ on each side. When it is wider than the bolt, the calculator says how many widths to seam together. See the backing calculator.

Batting

The middle layer, measured to the finished size including borders plus an overhang of 4″ on each side. Reported as a size rather than yardage, since batting is sold by the piece or off a wide roll. See the batting calculator.

Binding

The strip that encloses the quilt's raw edges, worked out from the perimeter plus 10% for mitred corners and joins. The strip width and method — double fold, single fold or bias — are yours to set. See the binding calculator.

Pattern packs

The printable pattern a finished design turns into.

Pattern pack

The full pattern as one PDF: cover, overview, shopping list, cutting chart, cut guide, assembly map, templates and finishing notes. Built from the saved design, so it always matches what is on the canvas.

Fabric key

The table on the pack's At a glance page that gives each fabric a letter. Those letters are how the assembly map names every piece, so the key is what ties the diagram back to your shopping list.

Cutting chart

Every piece to cut, with its rotary cut size — the finished size plus seam allowance — grouped by fabric and quantity.

Cut size

The size to cut a piece at, seam allowance included, as opposed to the finished size it measures once sewn. A 6″ finished square is cut at 6½″. Unrelated to a Cut, which is a shape mask — an unfortunate overlap of ordinary quilting words.

Cut guide

The visual page pairing each cut shape with the fabric it is cut from, so you can see what you are aiming for before trusting the numbers.

Assembly map

The layout diagram showing where each piece goes, labelling blocks by their fabric letter from the shopping list.

Templates

True-scale printable shapes for pieces that cannot be rotary cut from a simple measurement. Only pieces without a rotary recipe get one.

Foundation sheets

Optional mirrored template pages for foundation paper piecing, where you sew onto the printed paper and the image needs to be reversed.

Designer notes

An optional personal page after the cover — the story of the quilt, tips, a thank-you. Leave it blank and the page is not printed.

Theme

The accent colour and type treatment the pack is set in, chosen in the pack designer.

Preview PDF

The free sample attached to a listing. Every page is watermarked and everything you could sew from is withheld — cutting sizes, the chart, the cut guide and the templates — leaving what a shopper needs to judge the pattern before paying.

Sharing and selling

The community feed and the pattern market.

Community

The public feed of shared designs, and the word for anything other quilters have made public — the Cuts and Fabrics pages have a Community view too. Sharing a quilt posts a picture and the layout; your fabric photos stay yours.

Save to my quilts

Takes a copy of a design shared in the community into your own quilts, where you can change it freely. The original is untouched, and the post records how many times it has been saved.

Pattern market

Where finished patterns are bought and sold. A purchase is not just a PDF: the design opens in the studio, so a buyer can swap fabrics, recolour, resize and recalculate. Browse the pattern market.

Listing

One pattern for sale — cover image, gallery, description, price, difficulty, finished size and tags — built from one of your quilts. A listing is a draft while you work on it, active once published, and unlisted when withdrawn from sale.

Selling

Your side of the market: listings you have published, sales, earnings and reviews. Payouts go through Stripe, which you connect once before a listing can go on sale.

Platform fee

Quiltler's cut of each sale, 10% by default. The pricing step spells out what the buyer pays, what the fee is and what you receive, so the price you set is the price they see.

Reviews

Ratings and comments on a listing, left only by people who bought the pattern. The average shows on the listing card and on your seller dashboard.

Licence

The rights line printed in a pack's credits, saying what a buyer may do with the pattern. It defaults to all rights reserved and is only printed in full on packs built for sale.

Difficulty (Skill level)

How hard a pattern is to sew, from Beginner through Confident beginner to Advanced. It shows on the listing and on the pack cover, where it is labelled Skill level.

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