Explore Intelligent Quilting with QCT PRO

If you are thinking about upgrading your Quilters Creative Touch Software, you might be wondering how this level differs from QCT 6 or QCT 6 Plus.

Let's review the additional features you'll unlock with this upgrade and learn about in this quilting tutorial:

1. Pattern Record - Record free motion quilting designs to make your own digitized designs.
2. Edit designs you've recorded in Pattern CAD.
3. How to make continuous line designs and symmetrical designs in Pattern CAD.
4. Power Panto - advanced pantograph options with three pantograph engines to give you total control over your edge-to-edge quilting designs!

But the most essential feature for Quilters Creative Touch 6 PRO - you must have this level in order to activate a Gold Card.

Gold Card Access is the highest level of Quilter's Creative Touch Software which unlocks the best design and pattern placement tools. Click Here to find our Gold Card Tutorial and see the additional features you will unlock with this subscription.

The recording feature is the most powerful intelligent quilting feature within Quilters Creative Touch 6 PRO. This gives you the ability to record yourself quilting and save the recording as an intelligent quilting design.

In this case, you're using your Qnique longarm or Little Rebel to quilt a design using free motion quilting. You can also use ruler quilting to quilt your design and help control your movements. If you need help visualizing the design, you can draw the pattern on your quilt using a fabric pencil and quilt along the marked lines. All of these options are open to you when recording your quilting design.

If your goal is to create a repeatable, continuous line pantograph design, it's a good idea to mark a horizontal line on your quilt so your quilting pattern will be continuous.

In this intelligent quilting tutorial, you'll learn how to record a quilting pattern and edit it to become a continuous line pantograph pattern. Then we will plan a quilting layout with the digital pantograph see how to quilt a single block or a whole quilt with the design we made!

Follow these steps to record an intelligent quilting pattern in QCT 6 PRO.

Step 1 - From the QCT 6 PRO screen, tap "Record" and the Record Quilting Interface screen will appear as you can see below. There are 4 buttons on this screen that are important:

1. #1 - Start Recording - Press this button and the machine's movements will begin being recorded by QCT 6 PRO. You will use the buttons on your handlebars to control your quilting machine and move it to form your design.
2. #2 - Edit - Tap this button to switch to Pattern CAD and begin editing your quilting pattern.
3. #3 - Sew Recorded - If you are delighted with the design you've stitched, hit this button to place and stitch it again on your quilt.
4. #4 - Save Icon - Don't forget to save your design in the "Custom" folder in QCT 6. This folder is never overwritten so you'll always have your design.

When the recorded quilting pattern pops into Pattern CAD, it will look like this:

As mentioned before, I only recorded half of my quilting design because I wanted a symmetrical Feather Christmas Tree design. I had a few edits to make of the half tree design first. Let's get familiar with a few tools on this screen so we can navigate it easily:

#1 - Pattern > Edit Tools - It's very important to be within the correct workspace in Pattern CAD. The Pattern > Edit section you see here allows you to interact with lines and make adjustments to your quilting pattern.

#2 - Unselect All - We will continually select nodes to edit lines. To ensure you don't make edits to sections you don't want to work on, use this Unselect All button to deselect all nodes at once.

#3 - Delete - To delete a line completely, you must click and drag to select both end nodes, this click this delete button.

#4 - Smooth and Simplify - These are simple intelligent quilting tools you can use to smooth a jagged line or simplify a segment by reducing the number of line segments within it.

#5 - Optimize - Identical to the tool you might have used in QCT 6 Plus, we use this optimizer to check the quilting design, make sure all the sections are quilting in the right order and direction and check for breaks within the quilting pattern.

#6 - Mirrors - We will use the Mirrors > Draw workspace to create a symmetrical, mirror image of our Feather Christmas Tree design.

#7 - Preview - Check if your quilting pattern is continuous by clicking the Preview button. You can also see how the pattern will look when arranged in repeating rows like a pantograph.

#8 - Snap Selected and Snap Ends - Use these tools to snap two nodes together so there is no break in the design. Snap Ends is used to create continuous line quilting patterns quickly in QCT 6 PRO Pattern CAD!

#9 - Save Icon - Always save your design in the Custom folder within QCT 6.

QCT 6 PRO Pattern CAD has a unique way of working with lines, nodes, and handles that are very different from all other computer design software. You will need to adjust to this unique method of working with the nodes and handles if you plan to edit designs in Pattern CAD.

Let's learn about types of lines in this program:

Line - When you open a recorded design in Pattern CAD, all of the segments will be "lines." Lines can only be straight and have no handles to adjust to add a curve to the segment.

Each line has a red bubble on both ends - those are "nodes." To move a line and maintain the angle, the nodes on both ends must be selected in red. Click and drag over the node to select it. You can click and drag over each node separately, but any other nodes within the space may also get selected and moved too.

This is why it's easier to record the design, then switch to simulation mode for editing of the design using a computer mouse for better control.

In order to delete any type of line completely, you must select both end nodes, (Remember - click and drag over), then click the "Delete" button from the right toolbar or by right clicking and selecting "Delete."

Nope, "delete" or "backspace" on a keyboard will have no effect.

Fortunately you can click and drag across nodes separately, but have both selections count together. Click and drag across one end of the line, then click and drag across the other end and with both nodes selected, the line can be deleted.

Two other tools in the Pattern Edit toolbar will be helpful:

1. Smooth - this tool will add more lines to a section and slightly curve Splines, Arcs, or Parabolas, which has the result of creating a smoother appearance to the design. 
2. Simplify - This function will also reduce the total number of lines / nodes within the design. Highlight all nodes by clicking and dragging or clicking "Select All" from the toolbar and click "Smooth" and "Simplify" to see what happens.

Click and drag across small sections of your design that have lots of nodes and individually smooth and simplify them and see what happens.

I edited my Feather Christmas Tree quite a bit. I found it easier to delete whole sections of short lines and replace them with one Spline or Arc to create the smooth edges of my feathers. How much you decide to edit is up to you and really depends on the finished look of the design you have in mind.

If you want a recorded "free hand" intelligent quilting pattern, don't edit your design to the point that it doesn't look free hand quilted...

To turn this into ONE connected quilting pattern, we first need to get all the segments in the right order. 

Step 1 - Click "Animate Stitching" and watch the design stitch out. If it goes too fast, slow down the speed to 1. Watch the direction the lines stitch an look for light blue lines which indicate breaks or jumps in the design. 

Step 2 - If you notice a line is stitching in the wrong direction, tap the "Auto Reverse" button and click "Animate Stitching" again. The light blue lines that represent trim lines should disappear as the lines are formed in the correct direction.

Step 3 - If you have lines that are out of order, like the upper feather is being stitched before the lower feather, you'll need to select the yellow bubbles to tell the line segments to stitch in the proper order. This can also be used to make a design stitch from a different direction if desired.

Start with the yellow bubble on the line you want to be #1, then go from there, tapping each yellow bubble in order to update the numbers to run in the correct order. 

As you change the numbered order of the lines, the numbers in the other bubbles may change themselves, which can be confusing. If you have to, tap the lower left hand corner to reselect #1 and tap the yellow bubbles again to get them in the right order.

Step 4 - Once the line segments (yellow numbered bubbles) are in the right order and going all in the right direction (no blue lines breaking things up), then click the checkbox on "Check for Breaks" and "Animate Stitching" once more.

As the line hits each break, it will ask you if you want to remove the break. Click "yes" for each one and then your design will have one single yellow bubble with the #1 - only one line segment for the whole design!

It's time to create a symmetrical Feather Christmas Tree intelligent quilting pattern using the Mirror Tools in Pattern CAD! This is a powerful tool within the quilting software that can quickly and easily create unique, symmetrical quilting designs. Don't forget to save your quilting pattern first and then let's jump into using the mirror tool:

Here are the steps to follow along with the image above:

1. Step 1 - From the Pattern > Edit workspace click "Select All" to select all the nodes / line segments so you can move the entire design as one unit. Move the design so it is entirely to the left of the darker vertical line within Pattern CAD. There is a slightly darker horizontal and vertical line within the design area. Move the quilting pattern so the upper tip of the Feather Christmas Tree is on this darker line.
2. Step 2 - Click on Mirrors > Edit workspace. This changes all of the tools on the right-hand tool bar.
3. Step 3 - Click on the "Vertical" button. The design will immediately duplicate itself along the vertical axis of the Pattern CAD design space. If you placed your design properly, it will duplicate and flip the quilting pattern to create a symmetrical quilting design.

Adding the mirror can have interesting effects on your quilting pattern. Do you want to continue editing? You can edit the design with the mirror in place! Follow these steps with the photo above.

1. Step 1 - Switch back to the to the Pattern > Edit workspace and edit only the left side of the quilting pattern. Everything you change will have immediate effects as the mirror will update and show you how the overall design will look.
2. Step 2 - You will need to optimize the design again and check for breaks again. Anything you change can create all the same issues for your design as before. 
3. Step 3 - Alternatively, you can use the "Snap Selected" button to link lines together too.
4. Step 4 - Once you're delighted with your quilting pattern, click "Apply Mirrors" from the left hand toolbar and the design will become symmetrical and the darker line indicating the mirror will disappear.

The design has been mirrored, but it is now two separate sections. Either click "Optimize" and "Check for Breaks" to connect the two halves, or you can click and drag over the spot where the two halves of the designs connect and click "Snap Selected" to connect the quilting pattern.

We have completed a beautiful symmetrical intelligent quilting pattern, ready to quilt on a Christmas quilt, or is it? There is one more important editing step in Pattern CAD and that is to make this a continuous line quilting pattern.

A continuous line quilting pattern is a design where the starting point and ending point align on the same horizontal plane. Think of lined notebook paper. If you wrote your name in cursive, lower case letters, you would start from the line on the paper and end on the same line on the paper. Continuous line designs need to start and end the same way.

QCT 6 Pattern CAD has a quick and easy system so you can check if your quilting pattern is continuous and snap the ends to fix them if they need a little tweak. Let's learn how to use this Pattern CAD feature!

Follow these steps with the photo above to make a continuous line quilting pattern:

1. Step 1 - Click "Preview" in the bottom right corner to see a preview of how your design will look when it's repeated in rows across your quilt. You can adjust the row spacing, size of the design, and stagger the rows to see different effects.
2. The most important element of this pop up screen is the text on the right edge. It will either say "Continuous" in green or "NOT Continuous" in red.
3. If your design says "Continuous" you've done a great job! You stitched and recorded a continuous line design all on your own. But if it says "NOT Continuous" in green, don't feel bad. Close the preview screen and let's make a continuous line quilting pattern!
4. Step 2 - On the left sidebar, click the "Snap Ends" button. A pop-up warning will appear with two options because the ends of the design are so far apart:

"It appears this design is intended to have separate end points. Do you wish to only snap the vertical components of the points? (Yes) or...Do you wish to snap the end points together? (Continue)"

1. Step 3 - For the purposes of this tutorial and the design we are creating, we want to hit "Yes" on this box. The starting and ending points will shift to end on the same line.
2. Step 4 - Now when you click "Preview" the design will have a "Continuous" green line and you're ready to quilt your design as an edge-to-edge pantograph.

Before moving on, make sure to click "File" and "Save Design" and save your design to the Custom folder within QCT 6. We've recorded a quilting pattern, edited it to be symmetrical and a continuous line design, and now it's time to quilt this intelligent quilting pattern using Power Panto!

QCT 6 PRO adds three new pantograph quilting planning platforms to your Quilter's Creative Touch software:

1. Power Panto
2. EZ
3. Basic

You can also switch your QCT software level to go back and use the simpler pantograph makers from QCT 6 and QCT 6 Plus. That makes a total of 5 different ways you can plan and quilt pantographs with QCT 6 PRO!

I used the Power Panto intelligent quilting planning platform to play with my Feather Christmas Tree pattern. Because I didn't have a large quilt to work on, I decided to quilt two 16 inch blocks with this quilting pattern, then cut up the blocks to make a holiday tote bag!