10+ Best Quilting Apps and Digital Tools

These amazing quilting apps will make your quilting life so much easier! Calculate, choose colors and fabrics, and design your next quilt with these jaw-dropping digital tools.

No one appreciates the magic that can happen if we turn off our devices and do something else quilt instead more than we do. But let’s face it. Sometimes even a quilter’s life can be so much easier with the help of quilting apps and digital tools. And we’re all about working smarter here! 

There are some incredible quilting apps out there that will help you plan, calculate, choose colors and fabrics, and more. So the smart quilter that you are, I know you’re going to love these!

I’ve gathered some of the favorite tools quilters love to use. Some of them are free, while others aren’t (but I’ve made sure to only include the ones that are actually worth paying for!).

So whether you need something to help you calculate, design, or choose colors and fabrics, there is something here for you for sure. Let’s get right to it!

Quilting Apps for Calculating

Quilt math can be a cumbersome endeavor and I know many of you would be pretty happy if there wasn’t any involved when making your next quilt. Well, lucky for you, there are many nifty little tools and apps out there that will help you take the math out of the equation (see what I did there?). And one of them is our very own!

Designed to Quilt Quilting Calculators

Our quilting calculators are among the most visited pages of this website and for good reason! They let you calculate all those little things that are sooo hard to calculate on your own. Believe us, we know, because we wrote all the math formulas that go into it.

You can use our calculators to:

• Calculate quilt backing and batting
• Calculate how much binding you need with the straight grain binding calculator or the bias binding calculator
• Or calculate how much fabric you need to make different basic blocks (with the flying geese calculator or the half-square triangle calculator). 

And the best thing – they are all free!

We keep adding new calculators to the list, so if you’ve got an idea of other calculators you’d like to see, send us a quick email or comment below to let us know!

You can access the DTQ quilting Calculators HERE.

Robert Kaufmann Calculator App

If you’re looking for calculators in an app form, this is probably the best one out there (at least judging from the number of users recommending it). 

Similar to our quilting calculators, it lets you easily plug in your quilt numbers and returns the different calculations. They’ve got ‘eight essential quilting calculators’, such as backing, batting, and binding calculators, and some useful little extras.

The RK Calculator is available for Android and iOS. 

Get it for Android HERE.

Get it for iOS HERE.

Tools and Apps for Quilt Design

Many people ask us what tools we use for designing our patterns and are somewhat disappointed when we say we only use Adobe Illustrator (I’ll talk about that in a bit). It’s pretty pricey and probably not the most reasonable investment if you’re just looking for something to play around with and try out quilt design ideas.

However, there are some amazing tools out there, that will let you do just that (and with a much friendlier pricetag!).

PreQuilt

PreQuilt is a great tool that lets you visualize your quilt idea in a very user-friendly way. You can create custom blocks that you come up with yourself or use one of the predesigned blocks (they’ve got more than 100). It also lets you import your fabric so you can try it out on your design with the actual fabric you chose (or are trying to choose).

It is a paid tool, but you can try it out for free (with some limitations, of course).

You can try out PreQuilt here.

Quiltography

If you’re working on an iPad, Quiltography is a great tool for designing basic patterns, playing with fabrics and more. It lets you choose from a vast pre-designed template library or design your own quilt blocks from scratch.

A handy little feature is its stash library, which helps you keep track of what fabric (and hw much of it) you already have.

And if you ever wanted to create a quilt from a photo, it even has the option to import a photo, which the app then converts into a simple pixellated quilt design.

Quiltography is available for iPad only.

Get it for iOS HERE.

Adobe Illustrator

If you’re looking for simple (and preferably free) tools to play with your quilt design, this is probably not for you. But it would be weird to give you a list of quilting tools and not include the one that we use on a daily basis.

Adobe Illustrator is a professional vector design tool and is the industry standard when it comes to designing quilt patterns. 

It lets you create any shape you can possibly think of and put it into any composition you want. It is great for trying out new pattern ideas and also creating the illustrated diagrams you see in patterns. Honestly, I don’t think I can imagine my life without it. We just love everything Adobe does!

Of course, just like all great things,  it comes with a price tag and also a bit of a learning curve. So if you’re not looking to sell your patterns, I suggest you look into the other tools I mention above. 

You can get Adobe Illustrator HERE.

They usually have a free trial period, so if you’re curious, you can give it a go and try it out!

Quilting Apps for Choosing Colors and Fabrics

Whether you think about it or not, quilting always involves some color theory in one way or another. We have a whole series of articles on color theory, so if you’re just a bit curious I recommend you read some reader favorites (like The Quilting Color Wheel or Quilting Color Schemes).

And if you’re anything like us and like to play around with colors, you’re going to love these fun and handy color apps.

Quilty Solid

If you like working with solids, you’re going to love this app. It basically lets you search for specific solid colors from different popular fabric and thread companies (including Art Gallery, Kaufman Kona, Aurifil thread, and more).

You can search by clicking on a color on the color wheel, by HEX or CMYK values, or even from a photo you upload from your phone.  It also references the fabric and thread colors to Pantone swatches, so you can pretty much search for any color you can think of.

Quilty Solid is available for Android and iOS. 

Get it for Android HERE.

Get it for iOS HERE.

Coolors

This is a fun app for creating great-looking color combos. It lets you browse through pretty much endless different color palettes based on colors styles, or themes.

If you find a color you like, it lets you lock, swap, and adjust colors to make customization and get that perfect combo.

We use this for our graphic design and it works just as well for quilts. It won’t tell you the exact fabrics you need, but it can offer a great starting point for your quilt color palette (and you can always use the Quilty Solid for the actual fabrics!).

I usually use the web-based app that is available here.

However, Coolors is also available for Android and iOS.

Get it for Android HERE.

Get it for iOS HERE.

Canva Color Wheel

This is another app that isn’t designed specifically for quilting but can be so useful when planning your quilt color palette.

If you’ve read any of our color theory articles, you know that the color wheel will tell you pretty much everything about which colors go together (and which don’t).

This nifty little tool from Canva lets you search for all the good-looking color combinations based on one chosen color. So for example, if you know you want a salmon pink in your quilt start off with that. Then, choose the different color combinations (complementary, analogous etc.) to find its perfect match (or matches). 

You can access the Canva Color Wheel here.

QuiltInk

If you like to follow patterns for your quilt and like to try out your color choices before getting the actual fabrics, you should definitely check out QuiltInk!

It’s a nifty little (web-based) app that lets you color your chosen pattern with your chosen solids. It’s super user-friendly (my 7-year-old used it with ease!), so you don’t need much technical skill to work with it.

The only downside is that it doesn’t let you play with ANY pattern. It only has a selection of patterns (which, to my understanding, need to be submitted by the actual designer). So you’ll need to first see that the pattern you want to make is available on QuiltInk.

But if it is, go on and have some fun with it It can really open up so many color options!

Currently, QuiltInk is free to use. All you have to do is set up an account and you’ll be able to use all of the fun features!

You can access QuiltInk here.

Quilt Mock Up

This web-based tool is similar to QuiltInk, but it lets you mock up your next quilt with any fabric – solids and prints! If you can’t find the fabric you want, you can even upload it from the www.

Again, you are limited to a selection of pre-loaded patterns. But there are many to choose from, so I’m sure you’ll find something you love!

You can access Quilt Mock Up here.

Quilting Apps for Organization

Organization is probably something all quilters could use a little bit of help with. There are different apps that claim to help with that but from what I could find this one seems to be a favorite.

Quiltful

The Quiltful app helps you organize your quilting projects, so you can focus more on sewing and less on planning and organizing. With this project organizing app made just for quilters, you can organize and search for your quilting projects, track your progress and plan for the steps to do next, maintain records of quilts made, and more.

It’s free for the first 10 quilts, so you can try it out to see if you like it before buying the premium version.

Quiltful is available for Android and iOS. 

Get it for Android HERE.

Get it for iOS HERE.

There you have it. Some amazing quilting apps to try out and have some fun with! Are there any other quilting apps or design tools you like to play around with? I would love to hear about them in the comments below!