January 13, 2012

Using Your iPad for Drawing Quilt Designs

As a machine quilter I spend a lot of time practicing and drawing out quilting design.  I have  used a variety of materials in the past to draw with before I found this App for my iPad.

I doodle ---a lot on my iPad screen using an App called Adobe Ideas. It is not a free App, and when I downloaded it over a year ago, the price was less than offered now. However they have upgraded it and you have the option of layers so I assume that is why the price has increased. It is a worthwhile purchase for $5.99 for your iPad if you love to sketch and practice your quilting designs before stepping up the to quilt as compared to using a dry erase board or sketchpad for example.

 Adobe Idea uses the iPad screen as your drawing surface. You can use a finger tip to draw, but I prefer an iPad stylus. Either one works fine.  You can pick colors of drawing pencils, erase and chose the size of pencil point. You can upload a picture of a whole quilt or a quilt block and draw over it. Save it. Email it to yourself, and print it out if need be. You can pan and zoom the drawing or picture. It's simply a lot of fun to use. Here is your iPad screen with Adobe Ideas and the drawing tools are on the left.

You have a blank slate to draw on. Pick a color to draw with and start drawing.
One of the tools is an eraser. So at any time you can go back and remove a line or the whole drawing if you wish. You can save all your drawings and click back on any of them to review or revise. Here is a collection of some of my past drawings saved in the program.
This is a practice drawing of some feathers where I wanted to learn what direction I needed to move to stitch out the design. I am able to pick different colored drawing lines, and insert arrows to help me remember which direction I want to move when I'm standing at the long arm.
The other neat feature of this Adobe program is the ability to take a picture with your camera, upload it to your iPad Photos, and using the Adobe Ideas option at the bottom of the tools click "select a photo" and upload a photograph onto the drawing screen. If you have the iPad 2 you have your camera onboard. I'm using an iPad 1 with my Panasonic Lumix camera.   In Adobe Ideas you can draw over your photo any quilting design as many times as you want, erase the lines, delete the design line if you wish or save it for future reference.

 The one draw back I've had is the program sends the photo as a .pdf file, not a .jpg. I would prefer it to arrive in my email as a .jpg. But it's not a problem unless you are wanting .jpg photos of your drawings.

Here is a picture of a quilt I'm working on where I used some of the drawings I doodled in Adobe Ideas.
 There are a lot of drawing Apps for iPad, but this one works the best for me. Oh--forgot to say that Adobe Ideas instantly straightens and corrects any wobbles or bobbles in your drawing lines once you are finished drawing. How neat is that!










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6 comments:

Shelley: the Dread Pirate Rodgers said...

You commented, "... Adobe Ideas instantly straightens and corrects any wobbles or bobbles in your drawing lines once you are finished drawing. "

heh ... if only it could do the same on the actual quilting! :-)

Back Porch Extras said...

Thanks for the info on the Adobe App. I have been looking for something like this to draw quilt designs.
PattyS

Mary Johnson said...

Yes, it's a great app - I've been using it since I bought my first iPad 2 years ago and it's the best one I've tried. I often share my drawings on my blog too - easy to either export or snap a shot.

Rebekah said...

Thank for this Angie,
I am going to try it. You mentioned taking the photo with a camera and uploading it. Can't you take the photo with the iPad camera?

Angie said...

Rebekah, I wish I had an iPad 2 with the built in camera. Alas, I have the first edition iPad 1. Yes, the iPad 2 camera should work depending on lighting of course.

Purple Pam said...

Wonderful information. Thank you for sharing. I like the quilting designs you have on the red/white/blue quilt on your machine.