How to Make a Quilt – Easy Quilt Patterns for the Beginner Quilter – Sewing Machines Los Angeles

Many people may look at exhibition quality quilts and just sigh and consider them to be out of reach. It certainly does take a while to master all the techniques to make this sort of quilt, but it is also possible to make a simple quilting project that is fun to make and gives pleasure both to the person who makes the quilt and to the one who receives it.

It is possible to buy quilt panels which make a complete quilt and just need to be layered with backing fabric and wadding (the insulation layer) before they are quilted and bound. This is obviously the most simple quilt to make.

But if you wish to learn how to make a quilt you will probably want to cut and sew fabric to a specific pattern. Here the most simple form of quilt pattern is to cut squares of different fabrics and sew them together in a way that highlights the diversity of the fabrics. For example, you could use just two different fabrics and alternate the squares to create a pattern similar to a chess board.

The next step beyond this, but still only using squares, would be to make a quilt using some squares full size and some squares made using smaller squares sewn together. Here you might have a full square 4″ square side by side with four 2″ squares sewn together to create a four patch that is the same size as the 4″ square. This is known as the Irish Chain quilt pattern and is one of the easiest to make but is very attractive.

Of course many quilts have fabric pieces in many different shapes and sizes. One of the earliest and most popular quilt patterns uses hexagons only. These are usually sewn around paper pieces to ensure that the hexagons are all the same size and so although the pattern itself is very simple, these quilts can take more time to make because there are extra steps and quite a lot of hand sewing involved. The most common quilt pattern using hexagons is known as Grandmother’s Garden because the different colours of the hexagons are arranged to look like individual flowers.

If you wish to stick to machine sewing, the next most simple quilt patterns after plain squares would be those that use half square triangles. These are exactly what you would think – a square cut in half along one diagonal to make two triangles. These are both simple to make and to sew together. They open up a huge range of easy quilt blocks which can make some truly enchanting quilts. The beauty of these is that they can look quite complex but in fact are quite simple to make. For a beginner quilter, this is a great confidence booster.

Once you have mastered the techniques of how to make a quilt by making small projects using easy quilt patterns, it becomes a much smaller step to move on to larger quilts with more difficult patterns. Most quilters find that they become hooked and cannot stop themselves from making more and more quilts.