About quiltr

So what is quiltr?

Quiltr is a little like a video game for quilt and fabric lovers, and a little like a tool. You can use quiltr to compare and preview fabric and color combinations—useful for planning an actual quilt—but it's also just a lot of fun to play with color and your flickr photos to make little digital quilts for no particular useful reason. You can save the quilt images you make with quiltr, and you can upload them to flickr to share with your friends.

I made quiltr!

I'm Dorie Schwarz. I love the online craft community and have been hanging around here since I started my blog, tumbling blocks, in 2006. I'm also a web developer, and quiltr is something I started playing around with a couple of years ago. I love when old becomes new, and the place where technology meets handcrafts is really interesting to me. I wanted to be able to "make quilts"—to play with color and pattern and shape—without having all my tools in front of me. And I wanted to try quilt ideas without cutting.

What else can we do?

Quiltr is a starting place for me for other similar things I'd like to build. Wouldn't it be great to make a tool like this that also had a fabric library loaded with your favorite manufacturers? And wouldn't it be nice to define your own quilt patterns as well as use the classic quilt presets? How about making a digital quilt using an online fabric shop's inventory—a plan before you buy feature? I see so many places where quiltr-like functionality would be fun and useful. I think I'm looking for others' feedback on where to begin.

Technical points and some thank yous

Quiltr uses the Flickr API. I used the ColdFusion library for that API, CFlickr, written by Chris Blackwell. I also used jQuery and the farbtastic and jCarousel plugins. I am appreciative that all of these were openly available.

Quiltr uses the HTML5 canvas tag. Thanks to all the major browsers for getting their act together and supporting it. :-)

A big thanks to the wonderful people I used to get to work with every day. Your heckling, support, and kick-butt presentations have inspired me to build this.