Custom Quilting Made Easier: Pattern Tags, Margins, and More with Butler

Custom quilting gives you the freedom to make every section of a quilt unique—but keeping your designs organized and positioned exactly where you want them can sometimes be the challenging part.

In Feature Friday 2026 Episode 32, Aubrey walks through several Butler tools that can make custom quilting easier, including pattern tags, margin adjustments, and custom quilting techniques.

These may seem like small features, but they can make a big difference when you're working with multiple designs or trying to get a pattern to fit a particular area of your quilt.

Keep Your Quilting Patterns Organized with Pattern Tags

As your quilting pattern collection grows, finding the right design can become a project of its own.

Pattern tags give you a way to organize designs so they're easier to find when you're ready to use them. Instead of scrolling through pattern after pattern, you can create a system that makes sense for the way you quilt.

You might organize patterns by things like:

• Borders

• Blocks

• Florals

• Geometric designs

• Holiday patterns

• Children's quilts

• Edge-to-edge designs

The goal is simple: spend less time searching through patterns and more time quilting.

Aubrey demonstrates how she uses pattern tags in Butler as part of her custom quilting workflow in this week's Feature Friday.

Adjusting Margins for Better Pattern Placement

Margins are another useful tool when you're trying to control exactly how a quilting design fits within an area.

Sometimes you don't want your stitching running right against the edge of a block or quilting area. Changing the margin gives you additional control over the space between your design and the boundary you've created.

That can be especially helpful when you're quilting individual blocks, borders, or other defined areas where placement matters.

Rather than manually trying to resize and reposition everything until it looks right, adjusting your margins can help you create the spacing you're looking for more efficiently.

More Control for Custom Quilting

One of the biggest advantages of computerized quilting is that automation doesn't have to mean quilting the same design across an entire quilt.

Butler includes tools for manipulating patterns and building custom layouts, including scaling, rotating, mirroring, nesting, saving altered patterns, and creating multiple pattern boxes.

That gives you plenty of flexibility when a quilt calls for something more customized.

You can use different patterns in different areas, adjust their size and orientation, and build a layout that complements the piecing instead of covering everything with a single edge-to-edge pattern.

For quilters who enjoy the look of custom quilting but want the precision and consistency of computerized quilting, learning these smaller Butler features can open up a lot of possibilities.

Small Features Can Make a Big Difference

Pattern tags and margins probably aren't the first features that come to mind when you think about computerized longarm quilting.

But they're exactly the kind of tools that can make your day-to-day quilting workflow faster and easier.

A well-organized pattern library makes it easier to find the right design. Proper margins help you position that design where you want it. And Butler's custom quilting tools give you the ability to modify and arrange those designs to fit your quilt.

Put them together, and you have much more control over the finished result.

Watch Feature Friday Episode 32

Want to see these features in action?

Watch Feature Friday 2026 Episode 32: Custom Quilting, Pattern Tags, Margins, where Aubrey demonstrates how she uses these tools while working on a custom quilting project.

Whether you're new to Butler or have been using computerized quilting for years, Feature Friday is a great way to discover tools you may not have used before—and learn new ways to get more out of your quilting system.

Watch the full episode and then give pattern tags and margins a try on your next custom quilting project!