Wanna design quilts? Try these websites!

Here is my first tessellated pattern (besides squares)...see the end of the post for more on that.

I don't have any fancy software for writing up new quilt patterns- we are still working on graph paper and pencils here.  I just donated my stone tablet and chisel to the salvation army so I'm accepting technology in baby steps.  I have found a couple of online sites that are easy enough for me to do and a lot more fun that playing solitaire or bejeweled.   I wanted to share with you guys.

The simplest example of tessellation (see below)

Just wanted to share a couple of free websites today.  One I have used extensively is My Web Quilter .  They have backing and binding calculators for the math challenged among us as well as a neat tool which will allow you to see traditional quilt blocks together even with various colors so that you can try to create neat secondary patterns at the touch of a button VS. filling in a billion graph paper squares.

My favorite tessellated quilt to date!

Another site I just discovered is actually not for quilters at all.  It's a Tessellation maker.  Tessellations are patterns that interlock together.  The most basic would be patchwork squares.  Others include houndstooth (yay), plus sign quilts, whirlygigs, pinwheels, lantern light quilts, tumbler quilts, hexagons, diamonds, and triangles.  The tesselation maker lets you test out different colors and play around with everything from triangles to diamonds to squares and Half Square Triangles.  Go check out this tesselation maker site and see what you can create!