The Devil in the Details

Not a great week quilting wise.  I worked way too many hours this week.  Which meant I was tired and frustrated by the time I got home. Which is not a good combination for quilting.  So once again most of my work was down on the weekend. And it was not a smooth quilting weekend.

I got off a tiny bit early on Friday and started planning out the quilting for Viri's quilt.  I was going to do a fairy panto but soon realized that the panto wouldn't work with the quilt pattern.  I went through all of the digital quilting patterns that I had and couldn't find one I liked.  So onto the computer and looked for a pattern to download.  I went to the Intelligent Quilting web site and found a couple of designs I liked. It was at this point that I realized that I needed to purchase the winzip program that came as a free trial on my laptop.  That "free trial" was a detail I had missed.

Finally I was able to down loaded the programs and put them on a thumb drive. Now I have ordered from Intelligent Quilting before and had no problem with the programs. Quilt path opened all of the programs just fine. This time however it didn't. It was like the program wasn't on the thumb drive. I checked and it was.  I was so frustrated.  I did some searching and realized that the files weren't in the right format. 

You see each computerized system has their own format. I had mistakenly thought that I needed a QLI format.  The QLI format is for Statdler Stitcher. I have Quilt Path which is a GPF format.  I hadn't paid attention to what format I needed or even if the programs came in that format. Details are important.  Most of the websites include several formats in the down load.  All of the ones I got in the past had GPF formats as well as QLI. Another small detail I missed.

I contacted the web site to see if the 6 or so patterns I had bought could be converted to GPF.  I didn't want to have wasted my money. But I also knew that I wouldn't have the right format in time to quilt this weekend. So I went looking for another website.  I found My Creative Stitches.  On their site, I found a similar pattern to the one I got on Intelligent Quilting.  The website said you got all the formats and so I went ahead and purchased a couple I wanted.  Guess what? They didn't had GPF formats.  I later discovered that they listed what formats they supplied on their "about us" page.  Another email was sent and I was was completely discouraged.

I swear I remembered being told that I could use different formats in Quilt Path.  So I opened up my quilting laptop to see what I could discover, only to realize I needed to finish registering the quilt path installation on the laptop.  I was finally able to do that. The program would work just fine now.  After playing around in Quilt Path and getting more frustrated I resorted to actually reading the manual. There was my answer. right there in the manual. Under the directions for "plug ins".  I was able to open the pattern and then save it to a GPF format.  I was so pleased.

So lessons learned this week:

1. Pay attention to "free trials" on your computers. If you are going to use them just go ahead and buy them.
2. Know what format you need. In my case it is GPF. but fortunately I can get around that.
3. Know what you are buying.  If I had paid attention I wouldn't have been frustrated.
4. Read your manuals. You may very well be able to use other formats. 

I managed to get Viri's quilt done but that is a story for another week.  I need to send a couple of emails and let those website know I don't need the GPF format after all.

Have a good week and read your manual.