The Wizard And I (Power Tools)

Estimating yardage is not my strong suit. My first project was just simple squares, rectangles and “snowballs” (which are made of squares). Even with something that simple I managed to mess up the yardage calculations and now have a huge pile of leftover calico. That project involved fairly cheap fabrics – but the future projects I have in mind really should be done in better quality fabric. With prices in the area of $20 per meter and up, I really don’t want to over buy and spend myself into the poorhouse.

I was sure that there should be computer software out there that helps with this.

A quick “Google” revealed an assortment of quilting software. Being new to quilting, I wasn’t sure what features I’d want in a tool – and I was finding prices that range from about $25 to over $200! Then I found a product comparison site with blow-by-blow comparison with 6 different software tools (naturally I didn't save the URL and now I can't find the site... ...don't you hate when that happens?). It was immensely helpful to read this review and get an idea of what the features are and how easy (or difficult) the user interface might be. I have a computer-programming background and have worked with some pretty sophisticated (and difficult-to-learn) tools – but I’m not really interested in having to spend a lot of time reading user manuals. I wanted something straightforward and simple.

I finally settled on “Quilt Design Wizard” – a basic no-frills product by “The Electric Quilt Company”. I hunted for a place where I could just buy it online and download it, but apparently downloading isn’t offered. The Electric Quilt Company sells online, but it is a US-based firm, and I’m in Australia. In the US “Quilt Design Wizard” is fairly inexpensive ($29.95) but here the software retails at $42 (maddening! But it seems most things cost more here than in the US). So I found an Australian online retailer and ordered a copy.

The disk came and I raced to my PC and loaded it immediately. The install took very little time. When I launched it for the first time I was DELIGHTED to find that the user interface is incredibly easy – very intuitive. I was able to build a quilt design in about 10 minutes!

When I designed the Ohio Star quilt (my second project) I did it using Microsoft Visio. It took me about 3 hours to get what I wanted. I recreated the same quilt (actually... more precise than with Visio) with "...Wizard" in about 20 minutes – AND... best of all... once the quilt design is done, you click “print” and get a menu of reports you can have, which includes the yardage calculations!

Oh... I’m in heaven!

In about an hour I was able to figure out about 80% of the tool’s features. That’s partly because the user interface is so easy – but also because the tool itself is just very basic. After learning the basics via experimentation, I started looking at the video lessons that are built into the software.

Now... I’m not the most patient student there is. When someone says “video lessons”... I start gagging. I hate long winded stupid video tutorials that you can’t fast forward through – that ramble on and on, just waste your time. With this tool, though, the tutorials are actually very short – which is GREAT! For impatient people like me it’s not terribly painful to sit through a 90-second tutorial. These lessons are quick “get me in and get me out."

The only criticism I have of the tutorial videos is this: the "pause" and "stop" buttons don't work. You can stop or pause the video, though, if you happen to know that a "right click" inside the video window will bring up a menu that gives you control.

Now for the bad news. I discovered a problem with the estimator. I was showing the tool to a friend and we tossed together a design for a little wall hanging quilt – A simple "on point" log cabin design that would be about 36” square. When we went to look at the estimate for yardage the tool indicated that 9 yards of one colour would be required.

WHAT?!?!?!

Clearly there’s a bug here.

I spent some time playing with it and have come to the conclusion that if you start out with a bed-size quilt (king, queen, double, single), the calculations look reasonable. But if you happen to choose “wall hanging” and then use a block pattern that involves diagonally placed (“on point”) blocks – the yardage estimates are off – and dramatically off.

I checked the company's webpage for "fix" downloads and didn't find any. Next, just to be absolutely sure, I created another "onpoint" quilt design (this orange one). The quilt is 33x33 inches, has 5 pieces and uses one fabric. The estimator tells me I need 4 7/8 yards of fabric.

That just can't be right.

So I've emailed them and sent them the project file, asking them if this is a known bug and if they have a fix for it (I'm betting that they do).


PostScript: After finding this bug I pulled out some quilt magazines and set up 5 duplicate designs in “...Wizard” just to see if the yardage calculations would match those in the magazines. I’m very happy to report that they did, so it looks like the "bug" is confined to "wall hangings" using on-point designs.