happykidshappylife

Hello fellow quilters,
I am in need of a free western themed pantograph, I am new to machine quilting and I have the grace frame for it, I just have not found a Cowboy or Western theme pantograph. Any ideas. I am not very good with drawing and since I haven't done this much before, I would rather use one that someone may already have. Thanks for any help.

PaperPrincess

welcome to the board. Sorry, don't know of any site with free pantographs.

wesing

You might be able to take a child's coloring book and pull out the motifs you want then make them into a panto. I sort of did that once with musical symbols and it turned out ok.

Darren

happykidshappylife

Thank you ladies. I will try the coloring book idea. Sounds good!

Geri B

there are sources of all sorts of pantos, but you have to pay for them.........Just do a search for longarm pantos and they will pop up....Have fun looking/shopping

dray965

You can make your own, but it will take time (finding a pic you like, graphing it to the size you need, etc.) You can use graph paper to size them up or down... or, if you have one of those craft projectors (they're not very expensive) you can make them larger with that. Those are the only way I know of.

I use eq7 to make my stencils. I created a 'cowboy' design for my grandson's Christmas quilt. I also did an 'airplane' design for another grandson's quilt. If you have the software EQ7, it is easier to create your own designs and that ability, alone, made the price of the software an economical choice for me. (No I don't work for them...just a huge fan of the software.)

Quilt stencils/panto-graphs are soooo expensive. I might use that pattern one time. Then there is the question of whether it is going to fit the space I need in other quilts. As for price...paying 6-30 or so dollars a piece makes that unafordable to me, if I'm going to make very many quilts.

What I did: I found a cowboy hat and boot that I liked. Put the pic in EQ7 and drew it out. I connected the hat and the boot with little swirls...you know like a rope going between them. Then I sized it to the space I needed. in EQ7, that resizing is a snap...just put in the dimentions and print it out.

I did the same thing with the airplane quilt. I just found an airplane shape I liked..put the photo in EQ7, drew it and connected them with little swirls. This time the swirls looked like the trails that airplanes can make when they are flying.

I've done this a lot in the software, saving myself a lot of money from not having to buy stencils. Recently my husband's Christmas gift to me was the 8 volumes of the Quiltmaker stencils. So I'm pretty set.

When I first considered EQ7 software, the price threw me off. But since I've bought it, I've quit buying patterns and stencils...I can design my own.

pocoellie

Try forestquilting.com, they have a number of free pantos.