Send a pattern to testers and publish errata

How versions work

A pattern you’re working on is a draft, such as 1.0 draft. When you publish it, that version is fixed: its numbers, pages and words never change again, whatever happens to the quilt later, so the copies you’ve sold always match. Your next changes go into a new draft, 1.1.

Publish a version

1. Open the pattern and choose Versions.

2. For the first version, Ready to publish 1.0? lists every check on every page: words still to write, drafts you haven’t read, each paper’s page count, the license. Choose any line to go to it.

3. For a later version, say what changed under What changed. It goes on the notes page, for your buyers. You can’t publish without it once a version is on sale.

4. Choose Publish with the version’s number, such as Publish 1.1. The one before stays exactly as it was, numbers and all.

Send a tester copy

A tester copy is the draft as it is now, as a PDF with your tester’s name on every page and “not for sale, please don’t share” across it. You don’t need to publish first.

1. In Versions, beside the draft, choose Make a tester copy.

2. Type the Tester’s name and choose Make the tester copy. The dialog says whether it’s a Letter or an A4 PDF. It’s made on your device.

3. Send it to your tester yourself, by email or however you usually do. Quarter Inch doesn’t send it.

The draft lists who has a copy (Tester copies: and their names), so you know who to thank, and who to tell when something changes.

When the quilt changes: errata

A pattern follows its quilt. If you change the quilt after publishing (a tester found a border too narrow, say), the pattern’s draft follows and the version on sale doesn’t. A card says The draft follows the quilt. and lists each number that changed, before and after.

• Keep the change keeps it in the draft. Undo it in the quilt takes it back out of the quilt.
• In Versions, the note of what changed is drafted for you from the two versions’ numbers. It says where each part came from. Read it, change it to your own words, and publish.
• If a number you typed yourself in Your words is now wrong, the pattern finds it and offers Make it a live number, which follows the quilt from then on.

If our own cutting math improves, a card says so: your draft uses the new numbers, and the published version keeps the ones it was sold with. Choose Show every change to see them.

How it was made

If Help helped set up a version, the version keeps a record of what it suggested and whether you used it. It shows on the pattern only if you choose: the line on the last page is off unless you turn it on, and it never says “AI” or “Quarter Inch”.

If it doesn’t look right

• Publish says what changed is missing. Write a line for the notes page; buyers of the earlier version read it there.
• A part’s steps aren’t worked out. A few kinds of piecing have no sewing steps yet. Choose Write them in Your words; until then, Export for sale says they aren’t checked.
• You want to start again. Delete this pattern… is at the foot of Versions. Copies you’ve sold stay your buyers’.

Next: Export a pattern for sale. For the whole picture, see Quarter Inch for pattern designers.

Checked against the app on October 26, 2026