Jon Milley Creations
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve taken up quilting for the first time. Like most beginners, I quickly discovered that quilting is far more than cutting fabric and sewing it back together. There is colour theory, geometry, fabric estimation, cutting precision, and a surprising amount of planning before a single stitch is made. As someone who has spent years writing software, my instinct was immediate: there has to be a better way to plan all of this digitally.
So I built one.
QuiltForge is a web-based quilt design application I have been building in my spare time. It is free to use, runs entirely in your browser, and is designed to help quilters (especially those just starting out like me) plan their projects from start to finish before touching a single piece of fabric.
What QuiltForge Can Do So Far
Fabric Library
You can upload photos of your fabrics and organise them in a personal library. Add tags, give them names, and QuiltForge will automatically extract a dominant colour from each one. Your fabrics then appear as swatches throughout the rest of the app, so your designs always reflect what you actually have on hand.
Block Designer
This is where the fun begins. QuiltForge ships with a growing library of classic quilt block templates including Half-Square Triangles, Quarter-Square Triangles, Flying Geese, Pinwheels, Ohio Stars, Log Cabins, Churn Dash, Sawtooth Stars, and more. Select a template, assign your fabrics to each shape, and watch it come to life with your actual fabric textures.
There is also a free-form drawing mode for when you want to design something entirely from scratch.
Quilt Layout Designer
Once you have designed your blocks, you can arrange them into a full quilt layout. Set your grid dimensions, drag blocks into cells, and mix and match them across the quilt. Each cell can be individually rotated or flipped. You can also add sashing, multiple borders, and binding, each with their own fabric assignments.
The layout gives you a live preview of your finished quilt with accurate proportions and your real fabric textures applied.
Fabric Estimator
One of the trickiest parts of starting a quilt is figuring out how much fabric to buy. QuiltForge calculates yardage requirements for every fabric in your quilt automatically, including seam allowances, a 15% waste factor, and the standard bolt width. It rounds up to the nearest eighth of a yard so you always have enough.
Cutting Calculator
A standalone tool that takes a finished piece size and tells you exactly what to cut, with seam allowances included. It covers the most common units: squares, half-square triangles, quarter-square triangles, flying geese, and more.
Print and Export
When you are ready to get to the sewing room, QuiltForge can generate a print-ready summary of your project including a quilt layout diagram, block diagrams with piece labels, a full cutting list organised by fabric, and a fabric requirements table. You can also export the quilt layout as a PNG image.
A Work in Progress
I want to be upfront: QuiltForge is very much a work in progress. I am still early in both my quilting journey and the development of this tool. Some features are rough around the edges, a few are incomplete, and the design will keep evolving as I learn more about what quilters actually need.
I am building this alongside my own learning. Every time I start a new project and run into a planning problem, it becomes a feature on my list.
Free to Use, Always
QuiltForge is and will remain free to use. There is no account required, no subscription, and all your data stays in your browser. My goal is simply to make quilt planning easier and more enjoyable, and I hope it can be useful to others who are just starting out the way I am.
I Would Love Your Feedback
If you give QuiltForge a try, I would genuinely love to hear what you think. What works well? What is confusing? What feature would make your planning life easier? Whether you are a brand new quilter or someone with decades of experience, your perspective would help shape where this goes next.
You can find the app at quiltforge.jonmilley.com and send feedback or feature requests my way at https://x.com/jonmilley.
Happy quilting!