Quilt Cat App can be re-purposed to Design Geometric Canes

    Making geometric canes with polymer clay leads to endless possibilities. I like to digitally visualize them first. That way, I can try different arrangements and color options. At first, I was doing this with MS Paint, but I decided to try a quilting app.

   I have recently tried the Quilt Cat app. I only tried their free services, without any subscription. I want to start by saying that I have experienced frequent crashes. Whenever a help tip popped up, my work was lost. Once I noticed this glitch, I purposely activated as many tips as I could, to get them over with. Afterward, crashes were much less frequent. BTW, I am using a Moto G 6.
   My cane designs correspond with a single block of a quilt, not the whole quilt itself. So, I mostly used the "patterns" feature of the app.

   It comes with a lot of patterns already loaded, but I am obsessed with customization, so I got right to work making my own. BTW, I have an extruder disc that makes "half square" triangles, so all of my patterns are worked in this type of triangle. Triangles of the same color can be lined up to create squares, parallelograms, and more!







Click the white plus on the pink circle to start your own pattern. More on this later, but first, some samples...


   I probably should have given a more thorough look at the premade patterns, because I later realized that some of my work was duplication. I made a zigzag and herringbone patterns, but the app already had these loaded.
Here's a zigzag that I made. BTW I love the "sample quilt preview" feature. It's great to make sure all of your elements will line up the way you want them to!

Here's the premade zigzag pattern:

My herringbone pattern...

 


....and the premade one.

A heart that I made...

 
And their version...

 

   Okay, so, if you want to make a custom pattern you first need to select the dimensions. I like to choose whichever size can contain my pattern with the smallest number of sections. That will then translate to the simplest cane.

So, for example, for the zigzag and herringbone patterns, I used the 2x2.
The heart is a little more complicated, so I used the 4x4. You can go up to 6x6 for free, but larger than that requires $$$.
















Okay so here's what the editing page looks like:
   You can drag between dots to create a line, then use several lines to create a section. Even when I want a large area all to be the same color, I still individually create and fill each triangle. That leads to the lines around each triangle showing in the pattern, which shows you exactly where to place your triangle-shaped extrusions.
   The controls aren't super easy to understand and would be even harder to explain...I suggest just playing around with different buttons. If you have specific questions, leave a comment and I will try my best!
   Lastly, here are a few of my fav premade patterns that came free with the app. You can then go to the quilt-building part of the app to try different alignments and patterns-within-patterns. They don't let you save these with the free version, but you can always take screenshots!!!

 

    I'll get to work on trying some of these with my clay, soon. I will be sure to share the results! 

-Ciera