Quilting Templates: Making Things Easier

You have been making quilts by hand for years. You have spent hour after hour cutting out patterns and blocks free hand. Sometimes your leaves look like leaves. Sometimes they look more like mushrooms, but hey, what are you to do about it?

Find Or Create a Quilting Template

A quilting template is a precut piece of cardboard, paper, or plastic in the shape of a particular item. A quilting template allows a quilter to cut multiple pieces of fabric into a certain shape all at once.

For instance: you are cutting fabric into the shape of bows. You can either spend precious time intricately cutting out piece after piece after piece, and hoping they all come out looking the same or you can cut a whole stack of them using one quilting template.

Working with a quilting template makes quilting much easier. This is especially true for people who either don’t have the dexterity to do piece of piece, or they just don’t have the time or patience.

There are many sites online where you can order or even download quilting templates. You can find them in most fabric stores, or you can make one yourself. All you need to make one yourself is an idea, a design, some cardboard, and a pair of sturdy scissors.

Working with Quilting Templates

Here are some steps to make your working with templates easier than before: Using an Ultra Fine Point Sharpie pen, carefully trace template diagram lines onto template plastic. Template plastic is available in most fabric or quilt shops.

Cut out the plastic quilting template using the solid outer line as the guide. You must cut directly on the drawn line, don’t cut to the inside or outside of the line.

Place template on your fabric of choice and draw around the template with a sharp “fabric” marking pen or pencil (my mother in law uses sharpened soap; it comes out much easier in the wash.). Using a good pair of scissors and a steady hand, cut out the fabric.

How Creative Can I be When Creating a Quilting Template?

Be as creative as your mind will let you! There sky is the limit, as long as it fits on the template plastic itself. If you are creating a Halloween themed quilt, you can make a template for fabric pumpkins, broomsticks, candy, or moons. If you’re creating a Valentine’s Day themed quilt, you can create a template for fabric hearts, arrows, roses, and (if you’re really good) Cupid. There are so many different things you can create using a template.