To draw a landscape quilt pattern, it’s helpful to start from a photo, painting, or sketch of a landscape that inspires you. Learn more about the essentials of landscape quilt design.
Which Landscape Quilts Need a Quilt Pattern?
Drawing a pattern isn’t strictly necessary for very small or simple landscapes, such as landscapes on artist trading cards or fabric postcards. Part of the fun of creating a simple quilt is improvising and creating on the fly. The more complicated your original inspiration image is, though, the more important it is to draw a pattern before you start to cut and layer fabrics for the final quilt.
Creating a quilt map on paper has two major advantages:
- It helps you see how well your quilt design works, so you can add and especially remove elements before you cut any fabric.
- It helps you decide which fabric colors how much you will need of each fabric that will go in the quilt.
Simplify the Quilt Pattern for a More Striking Landscape Quilt
Landscape quilter Joyce Becker say that simplifying the quilt design is one of the most important things you can do to make a better-looking quilt. [Joyce Becker Teaches You Landscape Quilting, DVD, C&T Publishing, 2006, ASIN #B000I6AHOK]. Simplifying the image makes it easier to express in fabric and keeps the quilt from looking too busy.
A simpler landscape is also faster and easier to make than a more complicated one. Details such as trees, grasses, flowers, or other small elements can easily be added to a quilt at the embellishing stage with inks or paints, free-motion embroidery, beads, or hand stitching.
Supply List for Drawing a Landscape Quilt Pattern
The supplies for making a fabric collage pattern are simple.
- Landscape image such as a photo, painting, sketch, or postcard.
- Sharpie or another bold-tipped black marker.
- Fine-tipped black marker.
How to Draw a Landscape Quilt Map for Simpler Quilts
For simpler landscapes, just lay a piece of tracing paper over the inspiration photo and use a black marker to sketch a simplified map showing where the different quilt elements will go. For simple quilts, the pattern doesn’t need to be drawn to scale.
See Photo 2 at the bottom of the page for an example of a simple landscape quilt pattern that took just a couple of minutes to draw. All the main elements of the original landscape photo (Photo 1) are there – the road, the trees, the green grass – but simplified, to make them easier to express in fabric. Details can be added later with inks, paints, and free-motion embroidery.
If you like, you can label the different sections with the fabric colors that will go there. I usually just cut the colors freehand without labeling them on the quilt pattern.
How to Draw a Landscape Quilt Pattern for More Complex Fabric Collages
For more complicated landscape quilts, it’s more important to draw a full-size pattern. The pattern will help you decide which fabrics make up the background layers and which fabrics go on top. If the quilt will include a lot of different fabrics, a detailed pattern shows the size and shape of each piece of each fabric. The pattern can then be cut up so each piece of fabric can be cut to exactly the right size.
See Photo 3 at the bottom of the page for an example of a more detailed pattern that specifies the size and shape of individual fabric pieces.
Copy Landscape Quilt Pattern and Cut into Pieces
The next steps aren't necessary for very simple quilts, but they are essential for more complicated quilts. Number each piece on the original pattern where a separate shape on the original pattern. Lay a piece of tracing paper over the original pattern and trace each shape separately, leaving room between the shapes to cut them out. Assign each shape the number it had on the original pattern and draw an arrow indicating "up," so you can tell which way it goes after cutting it out. It's also helpful to write a word or two on the pattern to indicate which element it belongs to, like "mountains" or "lake."
Once this is done, you’re ready to move on to choosing fabrics and constructing the landscape in fabrics.
Related Articles
If you liked this article, you may also like:
- Landscape Quilt Fabrics: What Works in Landscape Fabric Collages. Learn to choose fabrics that masquerade convincingly as trees, rocks, grass, water, or sky. Use fabric to give your landscapes a unique and appealing style.
- How to Get Started Painting on Fabric. A simple way for quilters, sewers, scrapbookers, and other artists to embellish and alter clothing, quilts, home decor, or just about any fabric item.
- Color Theory Basics for Sewing and Quilting. Learn which fabric colors work best together, and how to choose pleasing color combinations for sewing or quilting.
- Introduction to Art Quilts. Art quilts marry the traditional craft of quilting with concepts and techniques imported from the fine arts and graphic design.
Christine Mann - Christine Mann writes about quilting, home decor sewing, and creativity in daily life.
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