Gabriella Goes Sideways: Importing, Tagging, and Editing Star String on the New Gammill
Happy Feature Friday, quilting friends! Last week we met the newest member of the studio, a 1994 Gammill with brand-new Quilt EZ Perfect Stitch regulation. This week, there's a brand-new quilt on the frame. In Feature Friday 2026 Episode 45, Aubrey imports a pattern from a USB stick, tags it, edits it to fit, and stitches out the very first row.
Meet Gabriella
The quilt on the frame is Gabriella, a Villa Rosa Designs postcard pattern. (You know how much we love those!) This one came together quick and easy. It's full of pumpkin, mustard, coral, and navy, which makes it bright and happy but still a little fallish, just right for this time of year when the leaves are coming down and everything feels cozy.
Why This Quilt Is on the Frame Sideways
If you look at the little rabbits in the center, you'll notice something: this quilt is loaded side to side instead of top to bottom. The right side of the quilt is at the top of the frame, and the left side is at the bottom.
The reason is the backing. Aubrey found an end-of-bolt sale cut of 108-inch-wide gray backing with little speckles that match the speckles in the quilt top. Turning the quilt on its side was the way to get the most out of that one piece of backing.
It's worth remembering that you can do this. If your quilt still fits on the frame, loading it with the long side across gives you longer passes, and Aubrey finds it goes a little faster.
Marking the Layout
The safe area (the orange dotted line) was already marked, so the next step was the layout.
In Layout, tap the plus sign on the right to add a new layout.
Move the machine to the top-left corner of the quilt and hover the needle about a quarter inch above and a quarter inch outside the corner. That way, if the quilt got a little crooked during basting, the quilting design still catches every edge.
Tap plus again and move across to the right side, hovering about a quarter inch outside the quilt top.
Tap the check mark, and a nice big layout box appears on the display.
One caution: on the right side, Aubrey gave herself a little leeway so she wouldn't stitch through her centering tape a second time.
Importing and Tagging a Pattern From a USB Stick
Aubrey bought a new design for this quilt and plugged her USB stick into one of the display's spare ports. Here's how she brought it in:
Go to Patterns and open the Import/Export tab.
Choose the tag before importing. Tap the white bar ("Select a tag to use"), scroll to the tag you want (here, the existing Sew Shabby Quilting tag), highlight it, and tap the green check mark. Now everything you import is saved under that tag.
Tap Import File.
For the storage location, choose External. Your USB stick counts as external storage because it's plugged into the display.
Open the folder for the design company (Aubrey keeps hers organized by designer, so there's a Sew Shabby folder on the stick), highlight the design, and tap Open.
In one quick flash, the import was finished: one item, tagged as Sew Shabby.
A note on file formats: Aubrey uses QLI. She finds that QLI and DXF are the best formats to use with a Butler, because they load well and look good when they stitch out.
Finding the Pattern by Its Tag
Back in Patterns, you could type the design's name into the white search bar. But tags are the point this week, so Aubrey scrolled her tag list, tapped the Sew Shabby tag, and every Sew Shabby pattern popped up. She highlighted the design, tapped the green check mark, and it loaded straight into the edit screen.
(A quick tip from the video: if your fingers are warm, the touchscreen may be a little stubborn. Plugging in a mouse helps!)
Why Star String?
The design is Star String from Sew Shabby Quilting: playful loops with wonky-looking stars. Aubrey picked it on purpose. The star fabric in this quilt has funny little asymmetrical stars, so she didn't want a perfect star. She wanted something a little different, and this one works really well.
Editing the Pattern to Fit
Add repeats. In the edit screen, highlight Repeat and add horizontal repeats until the design fills the layout area. The design hung out a little past the right side, which was okay for now.
Scale with the proportion lock on. Aubrey liked the stars' proportions and didn't want them distorted. So she opened Scale, tapped the proportion lock (it changes from a white, open lock to an orange, closed lock), and then tapped Auto Scale. That nudged in the bit hanging off the right side.
Move it back to the top. Auto scale also pushed the design down to the bottom of the layout box. Since you want to stitch at the top of the quilt, she opened Move (just under Repeat) and used the handy button that sends the whole pattern to the top of the pattern box.
About that trade-off: Keeping the stars in proportion meant the row came out a couple of inches shy of the marked right edge and a little thinner than the layout box. Aubrey was happy with that. She'd rather add one more repeat at the end of the quilt to fill the missing space than stretch her stars out of shape.
Stitching the First Row
Go to Home, engage the needle so it stitches, and tap the green Start button.
The machine moves to the start of the pattern. Remember: the green dot is the start, and the red square is the end, so you can always see where a pattern begins and ends.
Tap the check mark, and the machine slides over to the green dot.
Aubrey's thread matches the solid blocks in the quilt.
Fewer Prompts With the New Integrated System
If you watch closely, you'll see the machine take a stitch on its own while Aubrey's hands are nowhere near it. With the new Gammill's fully integrated Quilt EZ stitch regulation and Butler, she sees far fewer prompts. It still asked her to pull up the bobbin thread, but after that it slid into place, did the tie-offs automatically, and started stitching on its own.
If your system still shows prompts, it's the same process. Just follow your prompts to tie off and turn your stitching on. And yes, the new machine really is much quieter than the old one. Don't we all appreciate that?
The First Row Is Done
The first row of Star String turned out fun and whimsical, with silly little stars that are stretched in some places and shorter in others. That's perfect against the star fabric. The thread choice is a winner, too: it blends into the pinks and many of the prints and looks nice and bold on the blues.
The Takeaway
Choosing your tag before you import is a small habit that keeps a growing pattern library easy to search. And when you're editing, it's okay to give up a little coverage to keep a design looking right. You can always pick up the extra space with one more repeat at the end.
Next week, we'll work on nesting the rows. In the meantime, watch the whole process here: Feature Friday 2026 Episode 45: Importing/Tagging Pattern, Editing Pattern, Stitching First Row.
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