Monday, October 22, 2012

Threadbias Giveaway

Note:  I'm piggybacking on Katy's post, hoping to snag a few more supporters for Threadbias' Kickstarter campaign. 

Have you heard about ThreadBias yet?  It's a free community for quilting and sewing enthusiasts with sharing of projects, forums and groups, shops for fabric and for patterns (with freebies, yay!), a personal corkboard and more.



Now, the community is great and I've signed up but I've not posted much yet.  I'm really in it for the software.  One of the founders, Alex, is a coder by trade who, with his wife and sister, found a huge gap in the tools available to quilters and decided to create their own.  It'll be a Cloud-based (that means you don't have to download it to your computer) application you can use to design your quilts: you can upload pics of your own fabrics and with a click here and a click there, insert your own fabrics into your own design.

Do other programs exist that will do this for you?  Sure they do - if you're willing to spend lots of money for the install disks and store everything on a single workstation and then get a PhD in Geekology to learn the software.  To my knowledge there is exactly one product intended specifically for quilters; there are other apps, meant for other primary uses, that you can use for designing your quilts but the learning curve is STEEP and there will be huge pieces you don't use because they don't apply to quilting so much.  With the Threadbias tool you'll pay a subscription fee for access to the software - easy to use, easy to pay for, sounds like a great deal to me!

I grilled Alex pretty heavily at Sewing Summit and he knows his stuff, both in terms of programming and quilting.  We discussed some of the really geeky bits (architecture, platform) but also how a user would change all of their triangles from fabric A to fabric B, for instance, and I can honestly say there was no "Oh, yuck" moment while he was showing me the tools.  It's going to be drag-and-drop friendly, very intuitive, so you can think about your quilt instead of which axis goes where and which filters apply and all that nastiness.

The Threadbias team has an open campaign on KickStarter to fund this new quilt design tool.  You can read all about it HERE - and like Katy, I really want you to.  Please don't make me learn CADD, it's scary.

To help out I'm offering up a giveaway.  I have a large pile of SELVAGES ready to be mailed to your home;  I may be able to find another little goodie or two to throw in the box as well.  Make a pledge on Threadbias's Kickstarter campaign and come back here to let me know you did.  Giveaway is open to all backers of this project and will end when the funding campaign ends.
 
p.s. - I am not affiliated with the Threadbias team and know them only through Kickstarter and Sewing Summit.  The only profit I will gain from their success will be the chance to have a great tool for getting my quilting ya ya's out.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this on Threadbias...it was the reminder I needed to go and pledge! :)

    Fabulous idea for the giveaway and so generous of you! If I had more followers I'd certainly do the same but I just started my blog. ;)

    I hope it generates the needed support as it would be such a great tool to have!!

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  2. Like Angela, a big thanks for the reminder. I've gone and pledged now too!

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  3. I've pledged for this - I hope they make it!

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  4. I have already made my pledge. I think Threadbias rocks and can't wait for the design tool!!

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  5. I think I was the #3 pledger after True and another. This will be such an amazing tool. Please everyone if it's only $10 we can make it a reality. AND it needs to be done by Oct 31st so get off your stool and pledge!

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  6. I start to like the pledge thing - and I won't stop supporting projects I think are worth it just because I'm still waiitng for the promised "thank you note". I pledged and signed up afterwards - I want to know exactly how it turns out.

    But I can't say no to scraps, that would be wasting usefuly ressources....

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  7. OK, I'm in! I just made my pledge. Thanks for the extra motivation!

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  8. Hi there - that is a huge pile of selvages that arrived at my doorstep! I'm so excited! I've been pinning selvage quilt ideas ever since I found out I won!

    The fat quarters that were included are beautiful! I have another fat quarter of the "eggy" print here, but never wanted to cut it up because I liked it so much. LOL

    I was also super excited about the calendar. How lucky am I???!!!! I wanted to take a picture of my hubby and submit it for the calendar, but we never got around to it...

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