Amazing Quilting App

Those of you who know me know that I’m a quilt fanatic.  I LOVE QUILTS!!  They just seem to evoke warmth and love and everything homey.  In fact, our family doesn’t use blankets on our beds (don’t even own any) we all use quilts.  My kids have lengthy discussions (sometimes very loud) about who is getting the quilt mom is making.  Several years ago I started a tradition.  After all the gifts are opened on Christmas morning, I bring out the quilts I have made that year.  Spread them all out so everyone can see them and I draw a name out of a bowl.  Then the fun begins.  Each person gets to pick a quilt from the pile.  We go around until all the quilts have been chosen.  Then if someone wants to “steal” a quilt from another, well that’s fair game too.  Its fun to see who wants which quilt and I am always surprised.

Well, since I am such an avid quilter, I tend to not have an actual pattern in mind when I’m out purchasing fabric.  I love to pull all the fabric together and “let it tell me” what the quilt should look like.  As a result, I don’t always have fabric requirements in hand for the borders.  But I found a great app for my phone (android) and iPad that solves this issue for me.  It’s called “Quilting Calculators” by Robert Kaufman Fabrics.

This app will save you so much time.  Instead of standing in the quilt shop with your eyes closed adding up all the dimensions to figure out how many yards you need for an inside and/or outside border, just enter the length and width of the quilt then decide how wide you want each border.  The app calculates how many strips and how much fabric you need in either inches or meters.

But this app does so much more than just border calculation.  It also lets you know how many pieces of a given size you can get out of a piece of fabric, how many yards of batting and backing you need, how many yards you need for the binding, etc.  I’m not kidding, if you’re a quilter, you need this app!.