quilting designs
Quilting for Beginners: How to Quilt Beautiful Heirlooms your Family Will Enjoy for Generations
Did you know that more than 6 million beginner quilters decided to learn how to quilt during the last 3 years?
That brings the total number of quilters to about 27 million – that’s just in the United States. And most of those quilters, just like me, are presented with limited drawing and painting abilities.
Quilting is a fantastic way to create a work of art with fabric. It is well understood that the “painting” will not be perfect, and that colors and patterns are limited to what’s available in a quilt shop or hand dyed fabric.
Here Are My Top Tips to Help You Get Started in Making Quilts for You, Your Children & Grandchildren:
- Combine blocks of fabric to create your quilts. By changing the shapes of the pieces within a block such as substituting triangles for squares and switching light fabric for dark fabric you can create a whole new quilt design. And, you will still keep the construction of your quilt the same.
- Simple is the name of the game for many quilters. As a beginning quilter, focus on learning and practicing basic quilt making techniques that you will need to develop your craft.
- Use one or two shapes for all of the quilt patches. This makes it easy to sew a quilt together. Squares and triangles offer many advantages in terms of simplicity.
- Remember, interesting variations in quilt blocks are achieved just by where you place the fabrics in your quilt block, in addition to how each patch is divided in the quilt block pattern.
8 Easy Quilting Patterns to Get You Started
Quilt Pattern 1:
A simple nine-patch quilt block can be used as an example of how different a block can look just by changing the placement of colors within the nine parts of one block. Using only two colors of fabric in alternating squares creates a checkerboard design.
Quilt Pattern 2:
With the same nine-patch of two colors of fabric, using only square patches in each block, you can create a quilt pattern that looks like a big X.
Quilt Patterns 3 and 4:
Want more of a challenge? Take some of the square patches in the blocks and divide them in half from corner to corner (commonly called half-square triangles in the quilting world), and create an Ohio Star or Pinwheel quilt block.
Quilt Patterns 5,6,7,and 8:
Change the placement of your fabrics once again, and your block turns into a May Basket Quilt Block, a Maple Leaf Quilt Block, a Bow Tie block, or even a series of diamonds, called Slanted Diamonds.
Increase the number of colors in your quilt, and your design changes once again. And, by using only two basic shapes (squares and triangles) you can create all of your design changes.
Quilts are amazing works of art that have survived the test of time, and will continue to do so as long as there is fabric and quilting imagination.
Happy Quilting!
This article courtesy of theQuiltingCoach.com.
You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.
About the Author
As the author of more than 9 books on quilting and a quilter of more than 27 years, Quilting Coach Penny Halgren provides beginners and advanced quilters with easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions for making a beautiful family heirloom. Now, you can sign up for her free set of 10 quilt block patterns, and a wide variety of beginner quilt block patterns at TheQuiltingCoach.com
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Digitizing a Quilt Pattern
Quilters who are not already a machine embroidery enthusiast just may find themselves engrossed in the craft once they realize they could incorporate machine embroidery into their quilting.
Embroidery is a traditional way to add special decorative touches to quilts. Whether by hand or machine, a quilter may accent his or her creation with embroidered flowers or other accents. But today's machine embroidery - for those willing to try it - can make quilting quite different.
For instance, a quilter may use a simple embroidery design to let the machine "quilt" the project. Simple designs that can be stitched in one color work best, especially for the beginning machine embroidery quilter.
If you want to give this a try, look for an embroidery design that's simple - one that you can visualize stitched into a quilt. Some redwork inspired designs work well. Other simple designs like flowers, circles, sun/moon, houses, hearts - there are all sorts of designs to choose from - can work well as quilting stitches.
Be sure to keep your quilt top's theme in mind. We all know and love the traditional beauty of the double wedding ring quilt. While the quilt top is beautiful with its color variety, the quilt back is just as pretty with its simple stitching that follows the design on the top.
What if you used an embroidery machine to quilt hearts into the quilt design? That one unexpected touch would truly make your quilt unique.
Have you ever needed to throw together a quick quilt? Many quilting pros laugh at the notion, but sometimes we need a quick gift to give and want to make it personal. Lap quilts and baby quilts are very easy to create on an embroidery machine.
Simply hoop your top fabric, batting and backing fabric into an embroidery hoop. Pick a design and get to work! Even if you are quilting solid color fabrics, you can complete a quick, beautiful quilt with the embroidery machine in no time!
Some ideas for a baby blanket for a boy would be to use outlines of footballs, airplanes, trucks, trains, etc., for your quilting pattern. The hardest part of your job will be re-hooping fabric and pushing the "start" button!
Ideas for a baby blanket for a girl include outlines of flowers, baskets, dolls, kittens, etc.
The method above uses machine embroidery on relatively small quilts. Larger quilts can be done the same way or may be quilted with machine embroidery by individual quilt blocks. Experiment to decide which method is easiest for you and remember that the machine embroidery quilting method may change with each unique project.
If you can't find a pattern you like already on embroidery file, ask a digitizer to help you create one. A digitizer is someone who takes art images like line drawings, clip art and fonts and alters them to become a stitch pattern. So if you'd like for your family tree wall hanging to be quilted with a tree pattern, a digitizer can create one for you.
Be sure to let your digitizer know you plan to use the image for quilting. The digitizer will need to plan stitches accordingly.
Quilting is rich in tradition and therefore many true-blue quilters do not like the idea of using machine embroidery to quilt their projects. Isn't it great to try new ideas and techniques? Remember, not to long ago quilters refused to consider machine quilting at all! Embroidery machines will never take the place of quilters, but it can be a fun and rewarding sewing technique to try from time to time.
About the Author
Penny Halgren
http://www.TheQuiltingCoach.com
Penny, a quilter for more than 26 years, enjoys exploring all aspects of quilting sharing her knowledge with all quilters.
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