Quilters Niche

On my quest to learn more about our world of quilting, I recently had an opportunity to meet with Georgette Dell'Orco,  who creates digitized designs for longarm quilters with computerized machines.  She sells her beautiful designs through her online business called "Quilters Niche".  I'm excited to share insights with you today about Georgette and Quilters Niche.

As I believe there are benefits for non-longarm quilters to also be aware of Quilters Niche, I want to clarify why?  If you are a quilter that sends your quilts out to a longarm quilter, you may find a design at Quilters Niche that you feel is perfect for your quilt and ask your longarm quilter to use it, to make your quilt more beautiful.  Many non-longarm quilters are familiar with longarm quilting designs, as they want to actively determine how their quilts will be quilted! 

Georgette has been a sewing enthusiast for many years, with expertise in making beautiful tailored clothing items.  She began quilting about 7 years ago, and soon afterwards started doing her own machine quilting, on a midarm machine.  This eventually took her down the road of longarm quilting, and ultimately digitizing longarm quilting designs, which inspired her to create Quilters Niche, where she can share her designs with longarm quilters all over the world, at a reasonable price. 

While Georgette is proficient in a variety of software packages, she uses Art and Stich for creating continuous line quilting designs.  These designs can incorporate an edge to edge technique, or a standalone design such as a heart or feather, that could be perfect for a quilt block.

When I asked Georgette where she finds inspiration for her beautiful designs, she smiled and politely shared "from all around us".  Her inspiration might come from a photograph, something in nature, or she may just start doodling on paper and come up with a design that works for longarm quilting.

In the six plus years that Georgette has been digitizing quilting designs, she has established a large customer basis that is very happy with her designs, and her customer service.  Every month, she will introduce ~10-12 new designs.  She also creates custom designs, for a reasonable fee, or if the  customers agrees to give Quilters Niche the rights to sell the design the fee is typically the same price for current designs of a similar nature.

I asked which of her designs are the most popular and Georgette shared that the new designs tend to always be among the most popular, along with feathers and her Storm at Sea design.  But her entire collection of designs is very popular,  and has even been recognized in a number of quilting books where Quilters Niche's designs were used on the quilts shown in those books. 

On the Quilters Niche website information is provided on which file formats are available, but the majority of longarm machines are supported with the formats available.  WMF (Windows Meta File) is not needed by all machines, but is included.  PDF files are also included with newer designs, but if someone needs a PDF and it doesn't come with their downloaded designs, they only need to ask Georgette and she will gladly give them the PDF for their design.

During my conversation with Georgette, she also shared a few insights for longarm quilting that I found interesting:
- Longarm quilting designs are created and tested for a certain size design.  While you can resize them on your machine, too much downsizing can make the design too dense and too much enlargement can result in longer stitch lines (stitch per inch can be set by the quilter).
- It is best to space rows with no obvious gaps, as even a 1/4" gap can stand out.  Some edge to edge designs neet to interlock (nest) for the best all over effect.

Georgette also designs quilt patterns that are sold through Cozy Quilt Designs.  She has created far too many beautiful designs for me to list all of them, but here are three that I'm certainly looking forward to making in the near future and I wanted to heighten awareness of them with you today:

{above} Beach City Bloom, by Georgette Dell'Orco


{above} Evening Star, by Georgette Dell'Orco



















{above} Diamond Medley, by Georgette Dell'Orco

Clearly, Georgette is a very talented lady, and is helping to make our world of quilting so wonderful.  I do hope that you'll visit Quilters Niche to see her longarm quilting designs, and Cozy Quilt Shop to see all of her beautiful quilt patterns too.

Quilters Niche:

http://www.quiltersniche.com
Free designs:  http://www.quiltersniche.com/LinePages/Free.htm

Newsletter sign-up: http://www.quiltersniche.com/mainpages/newsletter.htm
Tel: 619-663-0320 (noon to 8 pm Pacific Time)
email:info@quiltersniche.com