A Love Letter to My Favorite Quilt Patterns

Picking a favorite quilt pattern is like picking a favorite child, a favorite sewing machine, or the best star in the sky. So for this, I am just talking about my favorite traditional quilt patterns. The ones our moms and grandmas made and probably the ones that made us fall in love with quilting.

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My Top 10 Favorite Traditional Quilt Patterns

Some of the patterns below are mine and some are from other talented designers.

Kansas Star

I love the Kansas Star, I’m a Kansas girl after all. I loved it so much that I based my quilt pattern, Down The Brick Road, on it.

Lone Star

The lone star quilt pattern was my mom’s signature quilt. I don’t even know how many hundreds of these she made over the years or if any of them are still around. This example is a FREE download from Jordan Fabrics.

Tumbling Block

My mom HATED making tumbling block quilts and it has always been one of my favorite quilts. I suspect it was because of that dreaded y-seam. There are a lot of variations of this block today that don’t use y-seams but they are typically bigger pieces than the example photo above.

Double Wedding Ring

I struggled to find an example of a traditional double wedding ring quilt. The one I had used in the past was a dead end, it’s part of the internet, blogs come and go. I did find this in Canva, a software I use to make social media graphics. There are so many options available today to make this traditional quilt, you can use the Accuquilt die set or use a more traditional template set. If you opt to go with a traditional template set I highly suggest using an 18 mm or 28 mm rotary cutter. No matter which option you go with they are both better than the sandpaper templates that my grandma used.

Broken Star Quilt

This isn’t the exact version that I wanted but I couldn’t find the version I wanted, the one my grandma made so many years ago completely by hand. Then I went looking for the pattern, of the quilt featured and whoever made it is no longer in business. I just got a “bad merchant” error so it is from a company that has closed. I tried using the name that Quilting Digest had but Madison Star brought me to this free pattern from Northcott. Which is a very cool star but not the one I wanted.

I had never planned on making this traditional quilt pattern but since I can’t find a current pattern in production it looks like I’m going to be. This is a problem with traditional quilt patterns if the next generation doesn’t show an interest in the pattern it will eventually fade away.

Pineapple Quilt

This is a small quilt block, 6 inches I believe. It has been a long time since I made this block. This one was paper pieced and you can get papers with the pattern already printed on them in 6″ and 12″. These preprinted papers are designed to be used with pre-cut fabrics. Creative Grids also makes a line of rulers for the pineapple block, this one makes 6″, 8″, and 10″ blocks and this one makes 6″, 9″, and 12″ blocks. You can also get an Accuquilt die to make a pineapple quilt block.

Pinwheel

The pinwheel quilt block is another traditional quilt block that looks anything but traditional with modern fabrics. I have a full tutorial on how to make a pinwheel quilt block.

Giant Dahlia

It took me a bit of time to find this pattern. There are so many spam sites uses the keywords for quilt patterns to get you on their site. Their goals are pretty simple, get you to give them your information so they can hack your bank account. The “less nefarious” ones are using stolen quilt photos as their own and just want the add revenue they get for you visiting their site, one site that was prolific on Facebook a few years ago was estimated to be making $10,000 a month on ads. I wish I made that much, I wouldn’t have to go to work.

I finally did at Michelle Yeo’s website. Michelle is a quilter in Australia and is working hard to keep the traditional quilt patterns alive an well. She has templates available for the giant dahlia.

Postage Stamp

The postage stamp quilt is a great scrap-busting quilt. I used my Accuquilt 2 ¹/₂” strip die to cut my scraps up and have been using those squares as leaders and enders. This is a long-term project.

Drunkard’s Path

Some people call this a pie and crust block but I’ve always known it as drunkard’s path. There is a lot of folklore surrounding this quilt. Like “never let a single man sleep under a drunkard’s path or he will always wander life alone.” I just shake my head and laugh. This quilt, like the double wedding ring above, really requires perfect cutting so it will go together easier. I highly recommend the Accuquilt die for the drunkard’s path. I know not everyone has an Accuquilt so here is a template set for the drunkard’s path.