Quilting for Beginners: How To Quilt Beautiful Heirlooms
by Penny Halgren
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. 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.
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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