How to Personalise a Quilt Pattern

I love the idea of receiving a bunch of fabric and a pattern as a kit. It really does make it easy to create a project without a lot of time on the planning stage. Many quilt shops offer Block of the Month programs in which you receive all the fabric you need to create a quilt, sometimes with a new block pattern each month so you can gradually create a whole quilt over the course of a year.

The new Fat Quarter Shop Sew Sampler box is another way to get a “project in a box”. For example, this month’s box contained two charm square packs of fabric and a pattern for a cute Christmas inspired table runner, the Cozy Holiday Tablerunner. It is super cute and all that is needed is background, border, backing and binding fabric.

The one thing that was putting me off getting started on this lovely project was the thought that all the other people who got the box would also potentially be making exactly the same thing. Now obviously that assumes that they will use white background fabric like the pattern and navy for the border, but let’s face it – we often opt for the example that looks so great because we know it will look great when we make it too!

However, I want to make something a little individual so here’s some suggestions on how you can personalise a quilt pattern too.

Change the background colour. This pattern has a lovely crisp white background in the sample picture but I’m making mine with a navy solid background. To pick an alternate background, look at the colours in your other fabric. Often a light fabric, like cream or white, or a solid dark colour, like black or grey, will give the other fabrics a chance to really pop.

Rearrange the blocks. In this case, all the blocks are the same but many quilts have a variety of different blocks in them. Rearranging the blocks can make a quilt look quite different to the sample.

Repeat blocks. Sometimes you love a quilt with a variety of blocks but you don’t love all of the individual blocks Why not just pick some of the blocks and repeat those? This can look great with only two of the blocks alternated across the quilt.

Add sashing or borders – or change them. Sashing, the strips of background between blocks, and borders, the strips of fabric around the outside of a quilt, can really add size and dimension to a quilt. Adding these into a quilt without them, or making them larger or smaller, can give you a very different look. You can also add multiple borders to quilts which again changes the look.

Setting blocks “on point” instead of straight. When you have a quilt with square blocks you can join them straight in rows across the quilt or you can tip them sideways to make them into diamonds. This is called setting them “on point”. Usually you then add triangles around the outer edges of the quilt to fill the gaps and make the whole quilt top square again.

Look out for my finished table runner soon!