Tips for Finding Digital Quilting Designs Posted by: Angela Short on April 30, 2019 at 5:44PM

Finding the perfect quilting design for a quilt can be challenging! It is easy to get stuck deciding on a style, and once that decision is made, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find a pattern that is suited to your quilt. Here are some tips for both deciding what to quilt and how to find that perfect pattern.

Decide on a Style

Commonly shared tips for choosing a pattern for your quilt include:

  • If your quilt is angular/geometric, then look for a curvy design to give the quilt some flow.
  • If there's a theme to your quilt, then look for something that goes with your them. For example:
    • your quilt has stars so look for a pattern with stars
    • the fabric has swirls so look for a design that is full of curves
    • the quilt is made from Dallas Cowboys fabric, so look for footballs or stars
  • If the quilt doesn't have a specific element or theme you can draw upon, then you could choose something that the interests the person who will receive the quilt
  • If the quilt can be classified as "traditional", then feathers are a common choice
  • If the quilt has more of a "modern" style, then something angular or simply quilting straight lines could work

Once you've determined the type of pattern you'd like to stitch out on your quilt, it is time to start the search for the perfect design.

Searching for the Perfect Design

Screenshot of Get It Quilted's Pattern Search

Our sister site, Get it Quilted, provides a Pattern Search to make finding digital quilting designs easier than ever! There are over 50 websites listed which sell digital quilting designs, but only about 40 have a search option. Without this handy resource, it can be quite challenging to keep track of which sites you've visited already and which search terms you've used so that you don't miss a potentially perfect result.

I recommend using a computer for the Pattern Search to get the most out of using it. (While Get It Quilted is mobile-friendly, the search is less practical on mobile and devices without tabbed browsing available. Plus, not all of the sites that sell patterns are mobile-friendly, so searching from a computer is the best way to go.) To use the search, simply enter the search term into the Pattern Search textbox and press Enter/Return or click on the magnifying glass. You'll see a list of websites with a link in the right column for your search term(s).

The first time you search, you'll get a popup that explains how it works. Please take a moment to read it, so you understand what to expect. There is also a video that shows how it all works.

Tip: Press the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac) while clicking each link to open it in a new browser tab. Press Ctrl+W (Windows) or Command+W (Mac) to close a tab if you didn't find something you like, thereby leaving only tabs with results you're considering open.

Please remember, we cannot predict the number of results each link will have. (We wish we could simply display all the results for you, but that isn't possible without the permission and cooperation of the website owners. In other words, it is complicated.) This search simply saves you the time of typing the same search term over and over again on multiple websites, so you can start viewing the results as quickly as possible.

Using the search helps to keep me focussed on finding a certain kind of pattern. If I go directly to a website without searching via Get It Quilted's Patten Search, I'm likely to get distracted by cute designs, and it takes me much longer to find the pattern I'm after.

Got any tips to share? Comment or use the Contact form to let us know.