So you finally finished your quilt top and are ready to start quilting! But where do you start? What are some good quilting designs for beginners that you can use?

Maybe you are new to machine quilting, or have tried it a few times and are not terribly comfortable with it yet?

You are proud of your quilt top and don’t want it to look like a 3rd grader scribbled all over it with a sewing machine.

But you just aren’t sure what designs to use that you will be able to successfully pull off as a beginner machine quilter. 

We are together in this machine quilting boat of nervousness so I decided to put together a list of good machine quilting designs for beginners that even the most beginner of the beginners will feel inspired to try out. 

Before we start

This list that I’ve compiled has two different types of quilting designs for beginners included: A free motion all over meander style, and a list of easy walking foot designs. 

If you are anything like me, my first quilt I was super pumped to take on a fancy custom free motion quilting design.

That was also super ambitious. 

Especially on a home quilting machine with a throat that my arm barely fits through. 

I completed the quilting, but after learning a few more things I realized that there were some much easier ways to get the same motif without half the struggle.  

But since I decided to take the “I’m smart I can figure it out” route, I made my life harder than it needed to be. 

Don’t make my mistake.

Get used to the quilting motions with some easy quilting designs for beginners and working up to more complicated designs.

Just because you start with the easy ones doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t already pull off more complicated designs.

It just helps you understand what tools to use to make those more complicated designs easier and cleaner to complete. 

Meander Designs

What is a meander design? 

A meander design is exactly what it sounds like. When you meander around a park, you are aimlessly wandering around with no real destination. 

Meander quilt designs are themed quilting designs that have no rhyme or reason to the directions across the quilt and don’t care about what the piecing underneath looks like. 

They are great for providing an all-over texture that are great starter quilting designs for beginners. 

Since you aren’t concerned about the piecing of the quilt top, you can just focus on how to work with a free motion quilting foot.

Not to mention they are typically much quicker and less complicated which will get the job done that much quicker.

So how do we start these free motion designs? We’ll need two things.

A free motion quilting foot for your sewing machine
The feed dogs dropped on your machine

Don’t have a free motion quilting foot yet? Here’s the one I use. If you have a low shank sewing machine even from another brand it should be compatible. Just double check the list first!

Dropping feed dogs

The first time I read about this I was stunned to realize you could drop them.

I had been sewing for years and never realized it. 

If you pull the “U” shaped deck out from your sewing machine and feel around in the back or the left side, there will be a switch.

Move the switch to the down position and you should see your feed dogs retract under the sewing deck!

Fancy, I know!

The reason you have to do this is because feed dogs are designed to automatically pull fabric through for you as you sew straight seams, giving you consistent stitch lengths. 

The problem is it also only expects fabric to enter the actual sewing area straight from the front. 

So when you want to free motion quilt, you don’t actually have free range of motion. You may push to the left, but the feed dogs pull from the front any way.

Getting the feed dogs out of the way will give you the “free motion” you need to push the quilt in any direction you want at any time to achieve these designs.

Random meander

A random meander is a curvy doodle all across the quilt and is likely the easiest of all of the options in this list. 

It is also referred to as a stipple if you’ve every heard that term instead.

This is actually the design used on my very first quilt . 

It’s a great option for beginners to get the hang of how to manipulate a quilt when free motion quilting without needing the skills of precision quilting, straight lines, or perfect corners. 

Everything is rounded and if you have a few corners by accident, no one will ever notice. 

The only rule of this meander is to not cross over your previous quilting. 

It’s kind of like that game “Snake” that was on early cell phones. If you run into your tail, you lose.

It’s the only aspect of this design that keeps it from turning into scribbles on the quilt.  

Zig zag meander

A zigzag meander is similar to the random meander but has sharp corners to it instead of a generally curvy path. 

This motif is great for getting the hang of corners and quick direction changes while free motion quilting. 

This one is great because it gives a bit of a more modern and upbeat feel to the classic random meander.

Related: 5 Meander Practice Exercises To Improve Your Free Motion Quilting

Watery Meander

A watery meander is wavy line that doubles back on itself. 

You can fill in a small section and then do a long sweep across and fill in the other side. Just remember to give yourself room to get out without crossing!

The idea of this meander is to give the impression of dropping a rock in a pond and replicate of the ripples that get sent out. 

This one isn’t intended to be straight lines or corner, because water never has straight lines!

I like the look of the water meander because I think it has just enough organization that it doesn’t feel totally random. 

Leafy Meander

There are many different ways to do a leafy meander. For this purpose of building up different free motion skills I wanted to include this very minimalist version. 

Getting the hang of changing direction quickly while quilting can be a challenging thing at first. 

Getting a nice sharp corner takes a bit of intentional movement that doesn’t always feel natural at first.

This meander is great for working in a curvy setting and then hitting the point of the leaf and moving on.

It will combine the skills of moving smoothly through the meander and switching to a sharp movement at the tip of the leaf.

It’ll get you comfortable with working with both movement at the same time and being able to fluidly change between the two very different motions with your hands. 

Swirl Meander

A swirl meander is just a great classic filler that you will often see in quilts.

Whether you use a small swirl or an elongated swirl, this technique is great for learning how to echo previous quilting. 

Echoing can have a great effect in quilting that really emphasizes what you are quilting and is a great technique to get some practice doing. 

Plus everyone loves a good swirl. 

Walking Foot Designs

Walking foot designs are great because a walking foot is just so basic and consistent and it does all the work for you. 

And doesn’t everyone love when someone else does their work for them?

Before taking on a walking foot design, be sure to check out my tips for getting perfect straight line quilting.

The tips will apply to every motif with a walking foot and will help you get those beautiful consistent walking foot designs. 

Don’t have a walking foot yet? This is the one that I use.

Straight line quilting

Straight line quilting is simple, its minimal, and always complements a quilt top. 

It can be done in so many different ways that its always a go-to for an easy quilting motif for beginners. 

For perfectly spaced straight lines don’t forget to get a quilting guide for your walking foot. 

Not sure what to look for? This is the one that I use.

Related:
How to Get Perfect Straight Line Quilting

Wavy line quilting

This version of wavy line quilting is a bit different than the watery meander design we already talked about. 

This one uses the preset curvy line function on your sewing machine and walking foot. 

The sewing machine does the curving for you making this technique look much harder than it actually is.

Make a Grid

This option is great to emphasize any type of grid piecing you might have in your quilt top.

Just make straight lines going in one direction and then turn the quilt and start quilting going the opposite direction to make a grid of quilting.

While being a simple design, it give you a little more variety than the typical straight line quilting you might default to otherwise.

Just be sure to get a quilting guide to go with your walking foot to make this technique quick and simple.

Related: 7 Easy Grid Quilting Designs To Try On Your Next Quilt

Diamonds

This quilting design for beginners is a little variation on the grid quilting.

Same concept except this time you are going to do two straight lines pretty close to each other and on the angle.

Then turn and go the opposite way on a different angle.

The key to this one is to keep your lines evenly spaced.

Make it a bit easier by marking your first line in both directions. Then you use those lines as your guide when doing the rest.

Herringbone straight line

For a more modern look, try a herringbone walking foot design! 

This design is great for learning how to manipulate a quilt in your sewing machine for quilting.

You wouldn’t think that would be a thing, but the first time you try to actually quilt a quilt you’ll understand why practice definitely helps. 

A herringbone pattern would look great all over a quilt and give a great subtle texture to the quilt top.

The Best Option for Beginner Quilters: Try a Pantograph

What even is a pantograph?

A pantograph can be stitched either on a home sewing machine, or a longarm machine, and is a stitched design that repeats itself in a continuous line across the quilt in a row.

Subsequent rows of the design will build to give an all over quilted design to the quilt.

Pantographs are fantastic for beginners because it requires using a stencil allowing you to put common struggles on autopilot like worrying about density, scale, and consistent shapes, that comes with free style quilting.

Many designs can even be completed using just a walking foot, they aren’t exclusively free motion quilting. Check out our Pantograph Basics Stencils for more examples of walking foot friendly pantograph examples.

Instead of making this post a million miles long, I’ve put a separate tutorial together for how to use stencils for pantographs on your home sewing machine. Its my go to option for when I want a change of pace from straight line machine quilting.

And if you are already familiar with pantographs, be sure to click here to grab a stencil for free so you can start knocking out that WIP pile ASAP!