Free quilt pattern collection

One of the great things about quilts is that you can make them from the good parts of old sweaters or other materials that have seen better days. You can mix these fabric pieces in with brand new ones, or wait until you have enough scraps for an entire quilt. It’s a great way to make something beautiful and useful out of stuff that has otherwise outlived its usefulness. I’ve put together a collection of free quilt patterns for you!

Free Quilt patterns

1. Molly’s Sketchbook: A Trip Around the Wool is more than a pattern: it’s a tutorial that shows you from start to finish how to sew this beautiful wool quilt. It’s great for beginners. It’s a big job, but Molly breaks it down into simple straightforward steps with lots of pictures so you can be sure you’re going about it the right way. Note that some of the color squares are out of place: she did this on purpose, to give it a unique and homey feel.
2. Eco-friendly recycled wool quilt, which makes use of several old wool sweaters that have seen better days and a sheet or blanket for the lining. This is a very simple pattern, ideal for beginners, and you can get very creative with it, taking inspiration directly from whatever materials you find for it.
3. French Floral Quilt Pattern Patricia C. Elkovitch. This is a beautifully detailed pattern is intricate and wonderfully old-fashioned. It’s a very classy pattern that will fit in with a number of different decor styles.
4. Chain links is a lovely pattern of squares and rectangles that seem to form chains, reminiscent of Celtic knots or an elegant tile pattern.
5. Honey Bee is a sweet little floral pattern that looks like bees feeding on flowers. This one involves some applique work, and is lovely in shades of green, pink and beige.
6. Indian star uses a series of blocks which have a three-dimensional look, due to the interspersing of dark and light patterned squares throughout.
7. Rose of Sharon is a quilt applique pattern which features four individual roses surrounded by a rose border. The linked page breaks down a number of techniques for putting these quilts together, along with some slightly different patterns you can choose from.
8. Splendid Harvest [pdf link] is a diamond pattern designed for use with fabrics of a fall theme. There are a lot of steps to this one, so if you’re looking for a project you can really sink your teeth into, this one should keep you busy for a while.
9. Minnesota Stars quilt pattern is a very intricate pattern – the sort you can stare at for a surprisingly long time while you marvel at the optical illusions and sense of depth it creates. It’s almost like a fractal, and yet it’s absolutely something somebody would have made 150 years ago.
10. Big Block is for beginners – very simple big blocks with borders. It’s easy to put together, and yet with the right material, it’s gorgeous. Check out the linked page for examples of how it looks with different types of patterned materials.
11. Snowflake Quilt [pdf link] creates the illusion of a snowflake by putting lots of triangular blocks in a pattern against a dark background. This one may be even better as a table cover than it is as a blanket!
12. Sunburst Quilt Block (second one down on the left) pattern gives you a block that looks like a sunburst, especially if you do it in sunny colors. But it’s also gorgeous in earth colors, dark colors – it’s just one of those classic patterns.
13. Amish Tulip Quilt pattern is just gorgeous – tulips between striped blocks inside a border. The dark background chosen in this example has a lovely dramatic look, but a light background would be sweet. There are a number of techniques at work in this one, and the work itself is very detailed.
14. Winged Arrow {scroll down} combines “flying geese patches” to create an angular look with clean lines and points, which you can soften or dramatize with your choice of quilting scraps. This is a classic quilting look, and you can use this pattern many different ways.

Learning to Quilt

If you need more guidance than just the patterns, check out these learning resources: Gloria Massard at SewAQuilt has a step-by-step system to teach you the basics, get you started, and keep you from getting frustrated. Start here, and don’t click the links within the pages yet (I did and got confused) – just read, and at the bottom of each page, click the “Next” link. Later you can go back and dig into more detail by following the links within the pages. And Victoriana has a library full of useful quilting tools – charts to help you calculate how much fabric you need to cut, tips, explanations about tools you need and more.