Pantograph design software, compared

Designing your own edge-to-edge patterns usually means expensive digitizing software. Here's what each option does, what it costs, and when a simpler browser tool is enough.

The full digitizing suites

• Pro-Stitcher Designer (Handi Quilter): a full design and digitizing program that exports every longarm format. List price about $500 at the time of writing.
• Art and Stitch: digitizing software that comes with Bernina Q-matic and is sold separately for other machines, at around €1,000 or more depending on the edition.
• Creative Studio (Gammill): included with Statler systems and made for them.

These do much more than pantographs: custom blocks, borders, fitting designs into shapes, and editing every node. If you digitize a lot, they're worth learning.

Free drawing apps

Inkscape and similar apps can draw the line, but they don't write longarm formats, and making a seamless repeat means lining up nodes by hand. You still need a way to turn the SVG into a file your machine reads.

PantoMaker

PantoMaker does one job: edge-to-edge pantographs. It runs in your browser with nothing to install.

• Draw a repeat with a mouse, finger or stylus, pick a built-in design, or open an SVG or a pattern file.
• It levels the start and end so the repeat joins seamlessly, and shows the whole quilt with nesting, shifted or flipped rows.
• It exports QLI, HQF, TXT, IQP, DXF, PAT, BQM, CQP, PLT, QCC and SSD, plus paper pantographs on Letter, A4 or one long page.
• Designing and previewing are free, and so are the built-in designs. Downloading your own designs and converting files is a one-time $19.

It doesn't do custom blocks, borders or shaped fills, and it doesn't make embroidery files. For those you need one of the suites above.

Which should you choose?

• You only want your own edge-to-edge designs, or to sell pantographs: start with PantoMaker.
• You digitize custom quilting for blocks and borders: your machine's own design software.
• You have a pattern in the wrong format: PantoMaker converts between longarm formats in the browser.