Introducing the Quilt Designer

The Quilt Designer is live — a full quilt layout tool built right into NiftyFifty, free for every member.

See it in action

Start with the blocks you know

The library pulls from the actual NiftyFifty archive — 1,200+ real quilt blocks with photographs, organized by exchange, state, theme, and designer. Search by name, filter by swap, or browse your favorites. These are not generic clip-art patterns. These are the real blocks that quilters in this community stitched and mailed to each other over twenty-five years. Place a block on the grid with one click.

Build the layout your way

Choose a preset size (Baby, Lap, Throw, Twin, Queen, King) or dial in a custom grid up to 20x20. The canvas updates instantly and always shows your current quilt dimensions in inches.

Use the fill tools to populate the grid fast:

• Fill Empty — drop your selected block into every open cell while keeping what you have already placed

• Checkerboard — alternate two blocks across the whole quilt in a single click

• Random Fill — pull from your current library filter and let the tool surprise you

Every change is undoable. Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on Mac) steps you back. The full history stays intact for your entire session.

Sashing, borders, and on-point settings

Toggle sashing on and set the width from half an inch to three inches. Add cornerstones at the intersections. Pick your border width and fabric color. The built-in palette presets distribute colors intelligently — dark for the border, mid-tone for sashing, light for cornerstones — so a coordinated look is one click away.

For quilters who love the on-point setting, the designer handles it properly. Flip your layout to diagonal and the tool calculates the setting triangles automatically — exact quantities and cut sizes for both side triangles (quarter-square) and corner triangles (half-square), with grain-line notes included. The geometry is correct.

Save, share, export

Save your design with a name, description, and tags. Set it to private to keep it for yourself, or make it public and it shows up in the community gallery for other members to browse and be inspired by. You can load any of your saved quilts from the My Quilts drawer and keep working.

When you are ready, hit Export and download a print-ready SVG. It scales cleanly to any size, works in every design program, and is yours to do with as you like.

Try it now

Open the Quilt Designer — free for all NiftyFifty members.