There are oodles of free quilt patterns available on the web. Unfortunately, not all are quality designs and they can easily leave a quilter not feeling very sew-cial. Some do not provide accurate fabric or cutting requirements, whereas others may not provide clear instructions on how to sew the quilt together. To clarify, "free" designs can be risky and untested. You may find that you purchase fabric and start working on a free design and find a problem, that leaves you with scraps of fabric. While I'm not a professional quilt pattern designer, I don't want to come across as complaining. I just want to issue a word of warning, that not everything in the world of quilting is free. And I do support professional quilt pattern designers who have worked hard to create usable patterns, patterns that have quality instructions and have been tested.
As such, I highly recommend you only use free instructions when they come from a respected source (e.g. fabric manufacturer, professional quilt designer) or, you have experience that will help you adlib should you find the instructions provided have a design issue.
My personal preference is to obtain designs from published books and professionally published patterns, all from talented designers, but I too like a good freebie. And I like to use a free quilt design when I'm making charity quilts. Not just because they are free, but frequently they are easy designs that I can make quickly and they will still look lovely so the recipient of the quilt will appreciate it, even if it doesn't take as much work as another quilt might.
I've gone thru my list of free quilt designs on the web. You may already know of these sites, or you may have your own favorites. But after I did some cleanup of my list, to remove some sites I no longer wanted to keep, I thought I'd share with you what I now consider my favorite sites for free quilt patterns.
AccuQuilt
All People Quilt
Anna Maria Horner
Andover Fabrics
Beverlys Fabrics
Blank Quilting
Block Central
Carol Doak
Clothworks
Connecting Threads
Cranston Village
EZQuilt Patterns
equilters.com
Fons and Porter
Free Spirit
Fat Cat Patterns
Jenny Beyer, Block Of The Week
Henry Glass
Hoffman Fabrics
In The Beginnings
Jinny Beyer
JoAnns Fabric
Judy Martin
Juke Box Quilts
Kona Bay Fabrics
Lucy Fazely
Makower UK Ltd
Marcus Brothers Fabrics
MaryQuilts
McCalls Quilting
Moda Fabrics
Moda Bake Shop
Quilt Maker
Pat Speth
Quick Quilts
Quilt Bus
The Quilter Community
Quiltville
Quilt Magazine
Quilt Pox
Red Rooster Fabrics
RJR Fabrics
Robert Kaufman Fabrics
Timeless Treasures
Windham Fabrics
If you do have a favorite, with good quality free patterns, feel free to leave a comment or email me with the site info.
This is an inactive blog, where content is still available. My MAIN blog is now QuiltShopGal @ www.quiltshopgal2.wordpress.com
14 comments:
I think you forgot Accuquilt...
Judy Laquidara at http://www.patchworktimes.com/patterns/ has several patterns that she's presented either as a quilt-along, quilt-an-hour or mystery quilt.
Wow, that is a lot of free patterns...
Thanks for the reference list...
Wow, thanks. I see a few that I haven't been to. I have run into patterns that leave me scratching my head.
great to see this list I have used some from different sites you have mentioned and I'm very pleased with them.
Karen
http://karensquilting.com/blog/
I have a link up page on my site too that you may want to check out. Lots of the same you have listed, but maybe some new inspiration too:
http://www.fabricsnquilts.com/free_patterns.html
thank you for the insight and the very useful list. i think you'll be glad to know that i consider YOU to be a reliable source :)
Thanks for the list of free pattern sites, this is great. I would also like to give a word of caution to anyone using a pattern be it free or paid, always review the instructions carefully before you start and make sure everything makes perfect sense.
Last year on 2 separate occasions I had patterns from 2 of the big manufacturers, and one was missing 1 instruction, while the other pattern was pretty much insane. This second pattern called for cutting instructions of things like 5 3/16", 4 5/16", etc. I would like to know of anyone who can manually cut accurately to a sixteenth of an inch. So after reviewing this pattern I was able to redraft the pattern and work it all at 1/4" as the smallest increment. As for the first pattern that was missing an instruction I contacted the manufacturer and they provided an updated document.
Great links...It's amazing how many free pattersn there are. Love your post!
Micki
Wonderful post! Thank you.
Thanks...we all love free patterns. You forgot Mary Quilts...great String Quilt patterns.
Thank you!
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