Setting Custom Document Sizes in Adobe Illustrator

I'm holding the world record for laziness today. I've done almost absolutely nothing all day except surf the internet, watch Netflix instant watch, and eat, so I'm going to try and eek out something productive.

In my many wanderings around the internet, I was glancing through the Marimekko fabrics online, and I really liked this print.

I think the overall shapes might make a nice quilt composition, so I pulled up Adobe Illustrator to start laying something out. I realized that I have to type custom dimensions in the New Document dialog box every time I started a quilt, and oh man it's kind of annoying. It takes about 10 seconds to do, but I do it so much I realized I might as well take the time to make some custom document sizes in Illustrator so it could take me about 2 seconds in the future. THIS IS HOW I GET MY THRILLS PEOPLE. I wish I were joking.

It's pretty easy to do.

1. Open Illustrator (I have version CS3), and select New from the file menu.

This will activate the New Document dialog box. What I was aiming to do was create a file in the drop down New Document Profile section for all the quilt sizes I might want to make.

As you can see in this screen shot, I've already made profiles for a twin, double, queen and king size quilt. Next up is a crib sized quilt.

2. Create a document to the desired size. Click OK.

In this case, I want a crib sized quilt, at a dimension of 36 by 54 inches.

3. Save your document to the New Document Profiles folder. That folder can be found under Library: Application Support: Adobe: Adobe Illustrator CS3: New Document Profiles.

At least, that's where you save it to on my system. If you don't have a Mac like me, you can find out what folder these things are stored in by selecting Browse... from the New Document profiles drop down menu in the New Document dialog box. That should get you the name and file path of where these things are hiding.

Step 4: Open a new document and select the desired size.

If you've done everything correctly, the next time you open the New Document dialog box you'll see the custom sizes you've created. In this screenshot you can see the background of the reference website I used to determine these sizes. It's pretty handy, and found here.

And here is a quick rendering of a potential quilt (twin sized), inspired by that fabric. Who knows if I'll ever actually make it, and if I do I might change the color scheme completely, but at least I have it visualized, just in case.