Stitch your own computerized designs with the Elevate by Gammill from Jodi Robinson
By Jodi Robinson: Gammill Quilt Artist
One of the fun features of using the Elevate™ system is that you can download Gammill’s CreativeStudio® 7 Software for free and use it to draw your own quilting designs. I have to admit, I am definitely not the most computer savvy person, so the thought of trying to draw designs in CreativeStudio was a little intimidating. After playing around with the program a little, and watching a bunch of the great videos available on the Gammill website, I actually found that it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be.
I really love using the Elevate to stitch out basic designs, and then go back and add freehand quilting to them. I decided that I wanted to try to draw a design that I use frequently (and normally stitch with a ruler). It is a “tiled” design that I then add quilting to inside the “tiles.” The picture below shows the design drawn in CreativeStudio
After you have drawn a design in CreativeStudio, you simply log into your PatternCloud™ account and upload your design. Now, I am ready to head to the machine, where I will sync my pattern from the cloud to my Pattern Manager on the Elevate. Below you can see that after syncing to the PatternCloud, my design is now in my Pattern Manager and ready for me to use.
I wanted to play around a little with how I could use the design, so I decided to stitch out a few rows of the design to experiment with different border options. As you can see in the photos below, I first chose the design, and the Elevate added repeats of the pattern to fit the area I had specified as the border. You can use the edit feature to add more or less repeats if you like, but I wanted them to
be the original size I digitized.
Pattern Shown in Repeat
I decided to go ahead and stitch out all three borders before going back to add the freehand quilting. As you can see from the stitched sample below, I stitched out one row at the original sizing, the second row was edited to be stitched smaller, and the last row I stitched leaving spacing between the individual designs.
At this point, I am ready to play with adding some freehand quilting to the open areas of my tiles. To do this, I simply unhook the belts from my machine and I’m ready to stitch freehand (this literally only takes seconds).
In the first border I tried two different options for filling:
Feathers
And some Modern Lines
I edited the second border to stitch smaller:
Pebbling added to Centers
Because I stitched this border smaller, the centers could be left open.
In the last row I left spacing between the individual designs so I could play with adding to the centers of the tiles, and the area between the designs:
The Full Sample:
I had a lot of fun drawing and stitching my own design! I am looking forward to playing more and learning all of the options Creative Studio can provide … in addition to all the cool stuff I can already do with the Elevate System.
Happy Quilting!