Tips For Choosing the Best Pattern for Your Quilt

1. Get inspiration from the designs in your fabric. For example, if your fabric is a floral design with tiny butterflies floating throughout the flowers, you might choose a butterfly pattern to enhance that small detail within the fabric. In this picture you immediately notice the horns of the deer. I decided to take that element and enhance it with a pattern that mimicked the horns.

2. Allow the colors in your quilt and the type of fabric to guide your pattern choice. In this picture the customer used flannel fabric in fall colors. A fall themed pantograph was the perfect choice for this quilt

3. Are there elements in your block design that can guide your pantograph choice? This quilt pattern was designed with lots of on-point square nine patch blocks. I decided to use an on-point square pantograph pattern to emphasize the on-point blocks. I then chose a pattern with an extra squiggle to the design to give it a spooky Halloween feel.

4. Sometimes you want to do the opposite of the geometric shapes presented in your quilt. In this picture we see lots of shapes with lots of straight edges. It needed a pantograph that would flow and give the geometric lines and shapes some “softness.” In addition, you see “movement” in some of the fabric. This pantograph choice provides both movement and adds softness to the straight lines of the quilt.

5. This next tip is easy. Allow the theme of the quilt to help you choose the most appropriate pattern. The best examples are t-shirt quilts and baby quilts. This quilt was made of soccer t-shirts, so the obvious choice was a soccer-themed pantograph.

6. Another great way of picking patterns is to base it on your style of quilting. Do you lean towards modern, traditional, or classic? Maybe you enjoy reproduction quilts or art quilts. In this quilt, the customer chose the traditional spool pattern and used reproduction style fabrics. We chose a traditional fan pattern with hearts to add a touch of whimsy. We wanted to let everyone know that she loves quilting!

7. Adding texture is another way to help a quilt come alive. If you have a lot of open space you might want to think about a dense pattern that creates lots of texture to fill the open spaces.

This customer wanted to use texture to create a “feeling” of wind blowing through a pumpkin patch on a cool Autumn day.

8. Lastly, remember that sometimes less is more! This antique quilt did not need any competition from the pantograph design. The picture shows how a simple swirl design allows the butterflies to remain the star of the show in this quilt.