Finding your designs
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QE-Pattern Finder will search through the folders on your computer to find quilting and embroidery designs in all major formats. If you have thousands of designs on your computer it will take a while to find them all, but then they will be displayed as thumbnails in the Catalog Preview window. You can set the view to show small, medium or large thumbnails.
Catalog
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The program comes with a set of categories - you can change, rename, add or delete categories and sub-categories to your liking. From the preview window you simply select and drag the thumbs into the desired category. The default set of categories is divided into QUILTING (with subcategories), EMBROIDERY (with subcategories) and IMAGES and ARTWORK. Yes, it will also show images, which is helpful to include photos of stitchouts or finished projects, or even images of designs that you haven't purchased yet. Or include the artwork of patterns in progress in your catalog.
You can export the catalog as an HTML file (including a table of contents) or print it - use a PDF writer to create a PDF of your catalog.
Filter
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Instead of showing ALL designs you can also turn specific formats on or off. Helpful to see only the file formats of the machines you actually own, hiding the designs in the other formats. You can search for (partial) file names, search for designs changed around a date - helpful if you don't have a clue what the name of the design is but you know you made it last year christmas :)
Editing
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QE-Pattern Finder includes an inbuilt editor: double-clicking on a thumbnail will open the quilting pattern or embroidery design in Editing mode: you can see how it will sew with the sew simulator, you can change the sequence, change the colors, delete parts, you can resize (and the stitch count will automatically be adapted), you can split parts of existing designs and create a new design from those parts.
You can also choose to open the design in any quilting or embroidery digitizing program installed on your computer (for example Art and Stitch) for futher editing / designing.
Auditioning designs
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In Design Editor you can open a backdrop (for example a photo of a patchwork block or a quilt) and copy patterns on top of that, to find the best design for the quilt or the block you are working on. You can even reshape quilt patterns for a better fit.
Text and Lettering and Monogramming
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You can add Text to your designs! We have 20 beautiful professionally digitized keyboard fonts in QE-Pattern Finder. Those fonts are different than the ones included in Art and Stitch PLUS, so getting QE-Pattern Finder will be a valuable extra! The program includes running stitch fonts too (great for longarm quilting). You can type a word, or a single line of text, multiple lines of text, make the text italic, vertical text, text in a circle, you can use different colors in one text object and you can create monograms too.
The ultimate organizer: Design Manager
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For those who are not a bit organized at all and QE-Pattern Finder has found thousands of designs scattered all over the computer, there's a great function: once you have moved your designs into the desired categories, you can let QE-Pattern Finder copy all those designs from wherever they were found on your computer into a new folder with subfolders in the same structure as your catalog: the program will create the subfolders for you giving them the same names as you used in your catalog.
Stitch a design
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QE-Pattern Finder offers a really quick way to get your design ready to stitch: even if you don't have a clue where the actual file is on your computer, just right-click on the desired thumbnail, choose "Open File location" and from there drag the design to your USB drive to transfer to your machine.
Batch converter
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Yes, QE-Pattern Finder can do batch conversion!! Select a folder with designs, choose the desired format to convert to and go. All stitch files will be changed into the chosen format at once. Very helpful if you are changing to a different brand of quilting or embroidery machine.
Note about Encrypted Designs
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Because of the wonderful editing, tweaking, adding text functions in QE-Pattern Finder, the program will not display Encrypted files. Some designers lock their designs to a specific system. They do so for a reason. We respect that and therefore encrypted files will not show/open in QE-Pattern Finder.
Minimum system requirements for QE-Pattern Finder™:
Pentium III PC, Microsoft Windows11®, Windows10®, Windows8® operating system, Intel® processor, 1 GB RAM - 1 GB of free disk space - SVGA Display (1024x768 resolution, 24-bit color or higher). QE-Pattern Finder doesn't need an internet connection to run, but for the Activation/Registration an internet connection is required.
QE-Pattern Finder does not work properly on a Mac.