New FREE Quilt Software!!!

Two Christmases ago hubby bought me Quilt Design Wizard from the same people who give you EQ. Now, I love this software. It's cool that you can put in prints as well as solids, and choose from blocks to set up quilts. There are many quilt blocks in the program to play with and I actually used it to come up with my plan for my Diamond Chains Quilt Along. I have even recently played around with it for setups for my Carpenter Wheels (when I finally finish them!).

Well, I just found out that hubby's aunt, who already has me making two quilts for her grandbabies, wants me to make a quilt for her other daughter as well. Keri is a large animal vet in Saskatchewan so when I asked what she might want on her quilt she said, "Australian Shepherds and horses". Um, okay. I did a little researching but I'm having trouble finding fabric with Australian Shepherds on it. So I wondered about paper piecing a dog. That set me to searching for instructions because I have no idea where to even begin creating a paper piecing pattern. I found something better. A program!

Have any of you heard of Quilting Assistant? I had not but came across it while looking online. It is free so I downloaded the program and started playing around with it. I will say this; read the manual! It is not difficult but I needed a little walk through to help me understand how it worked. I started with a picture of one of Keri's own dogs.  I was able to change it from this...

To this! I actually could have muted the colors all the way down to just basic colors instead of "picture" colors more as well.

Now, I will say, it prints out all the pieces and you have to put them back together. I'm still trying to figure out if you can print it out as is. Not sure about that yet.

After reading the directions I figured out that I could finally put my own block designs in this program. Remember X Marks the Spot?

I was so excited because one of the reasons I never did a quilt along for this block was because I couldn't figure out how to draw it out except on graph paper. Now I can even play with the layout and design. This was my original quilt design.

But after playing with the program, how cool would this one be?

Or this one?

Or this one? I changed the colors just to play a bit.

I'm very excited about having another option for quilt planning.  Just thought I'd share. Check it out!