March Tips

Corel Draw as a Quilt Designer

Note These are written for Corel Draw 3.0, but should transfer well to newer versions.

A perfect square

To make a perfect square or circle, hold the ctrl button down as you drag your shape. To make it come from the center, hold shift-ctrl.

Make 3 into 1

To group several items together, click the first, then hold down the shift key and click each of the others. The status bar at the top will tell you how many items you have selected. Select GROUP from the ARRANGE menu. The status bar will now say "Group of 3 items".

Make 1 into 3

To duplicate an item or group, use the Select tool (the regular arrow at the top of your tool bar) to select the item, then hold down the ctrl key and hit the D as often as you want to Duplicate your item.

I want it right there

To align items in a straight line, use the guide lines. Make sure your top and left rulers are visable. Click on the left ruler and drag to the right. The blue dotted line is a snap line -- anything you place close to that line will snap to it. You can do the same with the top ruler.

A perfect triangle

Drag out 4 snap grid lines to form a square. Using the Pencil tool, click in one corner of your square. Go diagonally to the opposite corner and click again. Now click, move to the next corner in your triangle and click again. With each first click, you anchor your line. The 2nd click anchors the other end. (If you hold the button down while you move the mouse, it will free- hand draw, and will probably not be pretty.)

Color me Beautiful

To color an object you can click on one of the colors at the bottom of the screen. The PaintCan icon is where you'll find all the tools you need to make graduated fills. You can also fill with a 2- or full color pattern from the roll down Fill menu. Don't want black&white? You can change any of the 2-color fills to any color combination you want.

I want an hourglass figure

To make an "S" curve draw a straight line (click, drag, click). Using the PICK tool (the other arrow icon) double click the line. Select "to curve" from the pop-up menu. Now you can grab the little boxes on the end of the dotted lines to make the line curve. With the Pick tool you can also move the line's anchors to change the depth of the curve.

My heart on my sleeve

To make a heart shape, drag out a vertical snap guide. Draw a straight line and double click it with the pick tool; select "to curve." Keeping it away from the snap line right now. Curve the line into half a heart and move it to the snap line. From the Transform menu select Stretch and Mirror. Click the Vertical mirror and leave original. Move the mirror image to the snap line.

My heart is full

To fill this new heart, use the select arrow to select both of the sides. From the Arrange menu select Combine. Switch to the Pick tool. Click and drag around one set of line anchors and double click on one of the anchors. Select JOIN from the pop-up menu. Do the same on the other set of anchors. You can now fill your heart with lots of color.

Clipart mania

Use Import instead of Open to get to clip art. This way you can manipulate the clipart, adding other pieces, changing the color, etc., without accidentally saving over the original.

I've got 25,000 pieces of clipart, but...

If you've found a segment of one of the included clipart, you can extract it from the rest of that piece of clipart. Import the clipart. Now select Ungroup from the Arrange menu. Get rid of everything you don't need. If you still can't get to it you may need to ungroup several times. Now you have that perfect segment of art to use.