Creative Graphics

CorelDRAW makes quilting easy®

CorelDRAW not only saves me a lot of time,it actually helps me come up with the designs.
It’s like having a design partner.”
Barbara Webster
Starforest Quilts

In August 2004, Barbara
Webster’s quilt “Rhododendron
In The Snow” was awarded£5,000 and the top honor ofQuilt 2004 among 138
competing quilts at the Festivalof Quilts in Birmingham,
England. Like many quilters,
she uses nature as aninspiration for the patterns ofher quilts. Unlike sometraditional quilters, she designs
her quilts on the computer –allowing her to create intricate,kaleidoscopic patterns ofphotographic images thatwould be virtually impossible
to accomplish without
powerful and easy-to-use
software. That software isCorelDRAW.

Barbara Webster lives on a 30-acre mountain farm in
the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina
with her husband and two dogs. For many years she
worked as a graphic designer in an office, creating
brochures and other publications using Adobe
PageMaker.
After she moved to the mountains from Charlotte, NCin 1994, she decided to start making quilts. She
obviously had a talent for it – her first quilt won BestFirst Quilt in the Asheville Quilt Show. This event
launched her new career as founder and principal
owner of quilt designing company Starforest Quilts.
“In the early days you could only use photographic
images on your quilts by using heat-transfer methods.
It wasn’t a very rewarding process – you couldn’t reallyprint the images on natural fabrics, the image had arubbery texture and the quilts were not washable. I
also found out I was allergic to the fumes,” says
Barbara with a sigh.
The combination of new wide-format, specialized
printers from companies like Mimaki and the rapid
advancement of computer processing power made it
possible for quilt designers like Barbara Webster toprint high-resolution photographic images in vivid
color on 100% cotton fabric.
“I remember casually watching somebody over theshoulder as they were playing with CorelDRAW a few
years ago,” says Barbara. “They inserted photos into
different shapes, like squares and triangles, andflipped them around and manipulated them with suchremarkable ease. I stopped dead in my tracks and I
knew that this would enable me to create exactly thequilts I could see inside my head."

Barbara bought a copy of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
the next day and started to create her own quilt
designs immediately. She typically starts by taking
photos of nature scenes with her 5 mega-pixel digital
camera Nikon Coolpix 5700. After importing theimage files into CorelDRAW, she starts to place theimages in different patterns to see if she can come up
with an interesting composition.
“DRAW has some amazing features I use everyday.
They save me hours,” she explains over the phone.
“The first one is PowerClip, I just love how easy it is toinsert an image into a shape and position it exactly
where I want. Another feature is Snap To Object. I
could try to line up all the hundreds of shapes in myquilt designs by hand, but it would take forever and it
wouldn’t be nearly as accurate.”
Some quilt designers use special quilt-making
software like Electric Quilter and Quilt Pro, butaccording to Barbara Webster, many professional
quilt designers use CorelDRAW.
“There’s no comparison in my mind,” says Barbara.
“You can’t really use photos in those otherapplications. The preview window is tiny, making itvery hard to get an idea of what the final quilt will look
like. They’re just not very user-friendly if you want touse photos. The only advantage is that they calculate
yardage automatically, but I don’t really need thatfeature anyway. CorelDRAW not only saves me a lot oftime, it actually helps me come up with the designs. It’s
like having a design partner.”Once she has created her design in CorelDRAW, sheexports her files as 300 dpi TIFFs and burns them on aCD. The CD is then sent to a friend who owns a large-

CorelDRAW Case Study – Barbara Webster, Starforest Quilts®

“DRAW has some amazing
features I use everyday. Theysave me hours. The first one isPowerClip, I just love how easy
it is to insert an image into ashape and position it exactly
where I want.”

format Mimaki ink-jet printer. This specialty printer isdesigned to handle thicker fabrics in wide formats –she can print images up to 55” wide and 3 yards long!

to be a well-educated woman in her fifties who has
more than 12 years quilting experience and a higherthan-average household income.

Says Barbara: "You can actually print longer than 3yards. We have discovered, however, that 3 yards is allthat will fit reasonably well into the steamer so welimit the runs to 3 yards."

Barbara was recently commissioned to create a quilt
for the Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Her 69”x54” quilt “Approaching Summer” is basedon photos she took at the nearby Brookside Gardens
and machine quilted by her friend and colleague
Heather Rogers.

“I prefer to use images I’ve taken myself, because I
really need high-quality, high resolution images inorder to get a good result,” says Barbara. “Everysingle shape in my quilts contains a 300 dpi TIFF
image. My quilt ‘Spring in the Smokies’ for instance,
consists of over 500 triangles. The final DRAW file wasover 1.8 GB in size – I had to buy a new DVD-burner toback it up!”
Barbara Webster fits the profile of a dedicated quilter
pretty well. (According to a 2003 study, 99% ofquilters in the US are women.) A typical quilter seems®

www.corel.com“It hangs on a concave wall in the lobby of theOncology Unit at the hospital,” Barbara says. “TheBrookside Gardens is such a beautiful andinspirational park and the center of the quilt includes alarge image of a pond that I think captures thetranquility of the place. It has been very well received
by staff and patients alike. It makes me happy to thinkthat something I have created, can comfort otherpeople.”To find out more about this product or
any other Corel product, please visit
www.corel.com or call 1-800-772-6735.

© 2005 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved.

Printed in Canada 01/05 JB#3069-413