Printed Fabric // FAQs

FAQs on Digital Fabric Swatches (Printed Fabric Swatches)

PreQuilt is able to use digital fabric swatches for your printed fabric to preview your quilt ideas. In a few steps, you can import a digital fabric swatch, which is a JPG of your fabric, into PreQuilt and link it to a patchwork piece in your quilt and quickly see what it'd look like.

Before getting started in the Help Guide, let's do a little Q&A.

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What is a printed fabric swatch (aka digital fabric swatch)?

A printed fabric swatch or digital fabric swatch is a digital image (usually a jpg) of fabric that can be imported into PreQuilt and applied to block and quilt components in order to preview what the quilt would look like using that fabric.

Where can I find printed fabric swatches online?

Most fabric manufacturers have digital fabric swatches available on their website (usually organized by fabric designer and collection) available to download and you can also find digital fabric swatches at your favorite online shop.

What is the measurement of a digital fabric swatch?

Most fabric manufacturers have two versions of their digital fabric swatches - one with a ruler along the bottom of the image and one without a ruler. While the swatch without the ruler is prettier and less distracting; for use in PreQuilt, it’s more helpful to upload the digital fabric swatch that has the ruler in the image. Don’t worry though, there’s a way to hide the ruler so that it does not show up in your quilt.

Digital printed fabric swatch without ruler

Digital printed fabric swatch with ruler

We’ve noticed that some companies have standard dimensions for their digital fabric swatches and we’ve used that information to create a little cheat sheet for you as a starting point or best guess for the dimensions of your digital fabric swatch.*

Swatch width suggestions

*Please use as a best guess, we cannot guarantee that your digital fabric swatch is actually using these dimensions.

What if I can’t find a digital fabric swatch for fabric I have in my stash?

Not a problem! If you’re unable to find a digital fabric swatch for a fabric that you’d like to import into PreQuilt, you can create your own by taking a picture of it. -- COMING SOON

Where are my digital fabric swatches saved in PreQuilt?

Once imported, all digital fabric swatches are saved in the FABRIC dashboard, which can be navigated to by using the tab along the top of your main dashboard. Your fabric swatches can be organized into folders or tagged into categories.

Fabric dashboard tab

How are the digital fabric swatches used in PreQuilt?

One of the strengths of PreQuilt is its ability to very quickly preview a quilt or block using a variety of different fabrics or colors. When a digital fabric swatch of printed fabric is imported into PreQuilt, it’s important to set the dimension of the swatch’s width.

Once the width of the digital fabric swatch has been set, PreQuilt is able to accurately visualize the scale of that printed fabric swatch in various components of your quilt - in blocks, borders, and even quilt binding.

If the digital fabric swatch is smaller than the space the fabric being used in a quilt, PreQuilt will not stretch the image to fill the space, but rather PreQuilt will tile* and repeat the digital fabric swatch to fill the space. This is important so that the scale of the printed fabrics design will be accurate to the reality of the fabric itself and how it will appear in a finished quilt.

*Please note that tiling an image (by repeating the digital fabric swatch over and over to fill a space) often results in a seamline. Fabric manufacturers do this deliberately so that digital images cannot be used to print onto fabric. We are unable to remove these seamlines.