I've not made many quilts from patterns. I don't often find patterns that are captivating (or approachable enough) to make from a pattern. My quilting journey began 06/22/19. I documented it in my blog posted called sewing and cursing. In that post, I describe pulling out my long-unused sewing machines and redeploying them to quilting.
I do less cursing now. My first quilt pattern was through a purchased, ultra-discounted quilt kit at Hancock's of Paducah. You can find quilt kits on their site here. It was a simple pattern with jewel tone oranges, purples, blues, greens with white. It made a wonderful throw quilt that had all the colors of my daughter's living room. I couldn't have purchased the material for what the kit costs. It turned out very lovely, and it was a great experience. The pattern included a foundation pieced block. I'm sorry to confess that FPP requires me to rewire my brain. But once you force your brain to work in the obverse universe, it clicks.
Having said all of that, I recently completed two of Material Girl's quilts (Prairie, Windmill). Well, the Windmill is not completed...I have done all of the piecing and layout, but I have to piece all the blocks into rows and quilt top.
Because my approach to quilting is fabric first (purchase high quality close outs and then figure out what to do with them), using a quilt pattern with specifics for fabric type doesn't work so much. My fun comes from seeing quilt patterns and dissecting them, and incorporating elements. There are many free resources for quilt patterns to include the aforementioned Prairie and Windmill quilts. Both of those were simply one block in different color renditions, but that simplicity does not diminish the value of the free pattern.
There are many quality content providers (Missouri Star, Jordan Fabrics to name two of the most prolific) that demonstrate free patterns. I wanted to provide some internet resources for you to check out for free projects.
I was poking about Hancocks' (my favorite place to buy fabric), and I found this beautiful pattern called Betwixt (click for free download).
I do plan to make this quilt.
Here's another free pattern called Lacey Stars from Windham
Here's an example of where a pattern will allow you to stretch your quilting skills by making the Lacey stars. These stars are given as templates in the pattern. The simplicity of the solid blocks softens the intensive piecing of the featured blocks. I think that I will tackle this pattern too.
I hope that this post has given you a few sources of inspiration of where to find free patterns to inspire you to make something that appeals to your design eye or something that will help you advance your piecing skills.
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