Add appliqué to a quilt

Appliqué sits on top of the quilt: a tulip in a plain square, a vine around the border, a bird in a corner. In Quarter Inch it’s its own mode in the designer, beside Blocks and Paint. Pick a shape, tap where it goes, then move, turn, size and color it. Every piece is measured from the creases you’d press in the fabric, so the screen and the placement sheet agree.

Add a shape

1. Open the quilt in the designer and choose Appliqué in the switch above the left panel.

2. Choose Add appliqué. There are 25 starter shapes in 7 families: leaves, petals, flowers, hearts, circles, stems and vines and birds. Search them (try leaf, heart or bird), or open Yours · My shapes for shapes you’ve drawn.

3. Choose a shape, then tap a square or a border to place it. In a square it’s centered and sized to fit, with a margin. To fill the rest at once, choose the button that says how many squares are left, for example every plain square.

4. Its fabrics come from the quilt: each part takes the quilt’s nearest fabric of the same color. If the quilt has none, the nearest Quarter Inch Solids color is added, and the note says so.

Stems and vines

Stems and vines are in the starter shapes too. They’re cut as bias strips, never templates. A stem keeps its Finished width (¼″, ⅜″, ½″ and ¾″) when you make it longer or shorter. A vine has humps: More humps and Fewer humps change how many, and leaves can sit along it. The Cutting page says how long a bias strip to cut.

Move, turn and change a piece

Tap a piece to choose it. Its panel on the right has:

• Where: Across and Up and down, measured from a crease (a square’s center lines, a seam, or a border’s middle). Drag it, or use the arrows by the Step for the arrows. A drag snaps onto a crease within ⅛″, and the tag says On the crease.
• Size and turn: Bigger by ⅛″, Smaller by ⅛″, Turn left 15°, Turn right 15° and Flip. A piece keeps its proportions, so its curves stay true.
• Fabrics: a fabric for each of its parts, changed one by one.
• Order: put on top or underneath. The order is said as you’ll sew it in that square: 1 Leaf, 2 Leaf, 3 Tulip.
• Duplicate, Replace with another shape, Edit the shape and Delete. Delete says so in a note with Undo.

Changes reach decides how far a change goes: Just this one, or All like it (the same shape, size and fabrics). What will change is outlined first. Pieces you placed together start as all like it.

Appliqué from EQ8

Appliqué in a quilt opened from EQ8 or EQ7 comes across where EQ put it, at any angle, stretched or mirrored as EQ had it. To change it, choose Change this quilt, then Appliqué. Every piece moves, turns, resizes, flips, recolors and deletes like your own.

EQ keeps a shape’s curves as many short straight edges. To reshape one, choose Make an editable copy: Quarter Inch redraws its outline as lines and true circles, never more than 1/32″ from EQ’s line, and shows the two outlines together. Then choose where it goes: in this piece, in every piece like it, or Only save it in My shapes. EQ’s own shape is kept in Earlier versions.

On an iPad or a phone

If it doesn’t look right

• Tapping the quilt places blocks, not appliqué. Choose Appliqué in the switch above the left panel first.
• A piece moved a little when you let go. It snapped onto a crease within ⅛″. Use the arrows to move it off.
• A change reached pieces you didn’t mean. Undo it, and choose Just this one under Changes reach.

New to appliqué? Appliqué for beginners covers fusible, turned edge and needle-turn.

Checked against the app on October 26, 2026