Quilt Top Design Ideas

I believe one of the reasons many quilters don't quilt their own tops, is they don't know how to come up with a quilting design or plan. And this can be a major stumbling block. I'm hoping that some of the ideas presented today will help you get over that block. When I'm ready to start quilting my top, I will lay it out and study it for a while and try to decide what that quilt needs. And then I'll go to my reference books.

Quilt Maker has published a number of quilt motif books and probably about 75% of my designs, start with these designs from these books. Otherwise I look at other quilting magazines. I look at quilts at quilting shows, the internet online has a lot of good sources for quilting designs. You can get your inspiration from nature, from architectural designs, from jewelry, from dishes. Anytime something inspires you, anytime you see a design you like, just take time to sketch it down in a sketchbook and then take it home and put it in a file for future reference.

Once I've decided on a design, I'll go ahead and take a picture of the quilt top or draw a diagram of the quilt top. And then I'll lay a piece of tracing paper on top of it, draw that quilting design on that tracing paper and see if it really works with the piecing of the quilt. If it doesn't, it's very easy to just throw that piece of tracing paper away and start over with a new one. One of the first things I learned when I started machine quilting is that a curved quilting design looks more interesting and adds more attraction to a quilt than just following the straight piecing of the quilt. That's what I've done with this quilt here.

I've made a feathered wreath inside the square block instead of just quilting in the ditch. Consider taking a shape or a design from your quilt and using it in different sizes for the quilting of your quilt. In this quilt, I took the flower applique motif and I quilted it in a larger size in this open block here. And then I took it in, made it into an even smaller size and embroidered it into the border. Use one quilting design in the block.

I have feathers in the block, use another quilting design in the sash. There's curly cues in the sash and then combine the two in the border where as you can see, I have both the feathers and the curly cue. Continuous line quilting is a wonderful way to quilt. It's a real time saver. Anytime you don't have to stop quilting and break your thread and start over in another part of the quilt just really saves you time.

That's what I did on this quilt here. This design is also in the Quilt Maker, motif books. I started at the top of the quilt and I was able to complete this whole design all the way to the bottom of the quilt without having to stop and re-start again in a different position. Another way to save time in your quilting, is if you don't have to mark your quilt top first. You can do a free form, unmarked quilting design.

And that's what I've done in this quilt here. Well, how I do that is I use the patches in the block as my reference point. And then I just make sure as I'm quilting this block, that I hit those reference points at the same place in each of the blocks. The borders and the sashes of quilts are a great place to practice your free form, free motion quilting. As you can see in this little quilt here, all of this quilting is done without marking and without stopping your machine and starting over in another spot, the same way with the sashing in this quilt.

How much quilting do you want in your quilt? Is it going to be a utilitarian quilt or is it going to be what I call a showstopper? This quilt here is just a small throw size and will probably be used on a sofa. So it doesn't have as much quilting in it. The quilting is pretty well spaced out.

It was also done unmarked and free motion. This quilt on the other hand is what I call a showstopper. All the feather motifs here, in these patches were first marked and then we're done with trapunto under them. There's a lot of dense background quilting in this quilt. I don't think there's probably a square inch of this quilt that doesn't have some quilting in it.

It took a major amount of time to do this and you wouldn't want to do it in every quilt that you're making but every now and then it's nice to challenge yourself. Another point that this quilt brings up, is if you do have a fancy motif, or pretty motif that you wanna highlight, be sure that you do it in an open area of the quilt. If I tried to do these feather motifs in this dark heavily printed fabric they wouldn't have it wouldn't have shown up and it would have been a waste of time. Also, you have to keep the same amount of quilting the same throughout your quilt. Quilting tends to shrink your quilt.

So if you were to do a lot of this heavy quilting in one area of the quilt, and not as much quilting in another area of the quilt, your quilt will come out uneven. In the same way if you do the body of the quilt with a lot of background quilting and the borders with very little quilting, you will have wavy borders. The batting that you use will also determine how much quilting you need to have in your quilt. Some batting, you can get away with quilting every two inches, some quilting, you can go every 10 inches. So just make sure you realize how much quilting your batting needs.

What is the theme of your quilt? Who is this quilt going to be for? Is it for a man or a woman or a child? This is a Christmas quilt. So my quilting motifs are Holly leaves and Holly berries.

I also grabbed this design out of the background print of this print right here. And I used it for the quilting in all the open spaces. You also see three lines of quilting here which are called, this is called echo quilting and echo quilting is used to highlight a patch or a block or an area of your quilt. If you had done just one line of quilting, your eye would pick up every mistake that you made. But when you do multiple lines, the mistakes, your eye kind of glances over those mistakes.

And they're even out, throughout those lines This quilt is for a baby. So it has more juvenile motifs. There are letters, letters and numbers around the outside of the quilt and around the applique bears, you'll see rubber duckies and some blocks, juvenile type of things. Quilting your own quilt top can be a major accomplishment. And I'm hoping that some of the tips that I gave you today, will help you accomplish that goal.