Quilt Motif Directions

Copy motif designs onto your quilt top.

Quilting designs, the lines that are created in a quilt by stitching the layers together, generally come in two styles. There are quilt designs based on straight lines, like crosshatch or diamond patterns. The other type of quilt design is based on quilt motifs. Motifs are any shape that you can draw, from flowers to mittens, in order to create a decorative look on the quilt. Quilters trace motifs onto quilt tops and stitch along the lines to reproduce the shape on the quilt. There are thousands of different quilt motifs, and creative quilt designers constantly create new ones. Many motifs are printed in books and magazines, and you must create a motif pattern to transfer the motif to your quilt.

Things You'll Need

• Clear template plastic
• Permanent marker
• Craft knife
• Fabric marking pencil
• Sheets of sticker paper

Instructions

Plastic Method

1. Lay a piece of clear template plastic over the printed motif, centering the motif in the middle of the plastic. Trace the motif onto the plastic using a sharp-pointed permanent marker. Draw for an inch or two, then leave a space. In effect, you are drawing the motif with a series of dotted lines. This will keep the pieces of plastic together.

2. Cut double lines all along the drawn line with a craft knife. This will create a long, thin space in which you can fit the point of a pencil to trace the motif onto fabric.

3. Lay the template plastic on top of your finished quilt top. Center the motif according to the pattern in your quilt.

4. Place the point of a fabric marking pencil into one of the channels cut into the plastic. Draw the motif onto the fabric by running the pencil through all the lines in the plastic. You will now have the exact shape of the motif transferred to the quilt top in dotted lines.

5. Quilt the fabrics by stitching along the motif lines, continuing the lines as if they weren't dotted lines.

Tips & Warnings

• Fit two or more small motifs onto one sheet of template plastic to avoid wasting plastic.

References

• Free Quilting Patterns: How to Use Stencils for Quilting