The FREE Jane Austen Quilt Pattern

The beautiful Jane Austen quilt! A remarkable patchwork quilt that is thought to be made by Jane Austen herself, alongside her sister Cassandra and their mother. It was created in the traditional technique of English Paper Piecing, whereby fabrics are tacked or basted to a paper template and then whipstitched together. 
Myself and Robin have drawn up a meticulous reworked version of the original patchwork coverlet FREE for you to recreate this spectacular quilt as well. 

It features a medallion style diamond centre panel with a broderie perse appliqued design of birds and a basket of flowers. Broderie perse is the technique of selecting and cutting motifs from chintz and other such fabrics and needle-turn appliquéing them to different background fabrics to create a new design. We have omitted a specific appliqué design for the medallion centre, so you can create your own. The main section of the quilt top is then made up of diamonds pieced between a cream and navy dot sashing, finished with a deep border of smaller sized paper pieced diamonds. 

We have been asked to make paper pieces for the Jane Austen quilt for many years, and for one reason or another it always ended up on the back-burner. Though when I heard news of a Jane Austen At Home fabric collection to launch I knew it we had to make time! To one of our loyal Festival of Quilts shoppers each year (whose name escapes me now!) that always asked, can we do the Jane Austen papers - this is for you! ;-) 

We are offering a free downloadable 5-A4 page PDF pattern through Sew & Quilt. We also have printed copies if you don't have access to a printer, and prefer a hard copy rather than online viewing. Wow, it was quite the brain exercise to create and draw up the pattern, so much so that I'm not sure we would have done it had I known that from the start, lol! Download your Jane Austen Quilt Pattern here.

Quilt Size: 71” x 89”

What do I need to make the quilt?

You will need the Jane Austen English Paper Piece Kit to complete the quilt top. 

We have created two options for you;

- Starter size kit, which is just one regular size pack of each (+1 extra of one, in order to cut down, details included in the pack and on the product listing) of our standard sized bag options we sell at Sew & Quilt, put together as one item for you to purchase. 

- Complete kit, which includes all the paper pieces required to make the quilt top (though it doesn't include all of the small diamonds for the border, as we thought you could reuse some of those, given the large amount). 

We have all the information inside the pattern on total numbers of pieces, and the EPP kit product page gives details on pack sizes (if you wanted to work out how far the starter kit will get you). 

We also have matching acrylic templates, these include a 3/8" seam allowance. 

What fabric do I need to make the quilt?

We have provided yardages requirements in the quilt pattern, based on cutting rectangles, as noted this will be the most wasteful in terms of fabric usage. However this is the only way we are able to give you an accurate yardage requirement. 

You will need 22 fat quarters for the main quilt top. 

5-1/2 yards ~ 5.25m approx. (large diamonds). For our version, we have used 18 FQ's from the Jane Austen At Home Collection + an additional 4 which are duplicated.

I hadn't even thought to mention in the quilt pattern which ones they were (silly me!), but it's important you should know this information which is not included in the pattern:

The four duplicated FQ's for our design are; Elinor 04, Harriet 09, Margaret 11 and Penelope 15. 

4-1/2 yards ~ 4.25m, approx. (Cream with Navy Dot, for sashing fabric)

9 yards ~ 8.25m approx. (borders, I would advise using up your fabric stash as the pieces are very small so you don't necessarily need the same collection, just stick with on-theme prints. 

3/4 yard ~ 0.75m (binding fabric)

The photo above shows you can cut (24) 3" 5-point diamonds to a (UK sized) fat quarter. Our pattern says you can cut (12) to a FQ, because as mentioned above we have based this on rectangles. Instead cutting this way (using the Jane Austen acrylic template set) you can be more frugal with your fabric. 

The Jane Austen fabrics are sold out? 

If our Jane Austen FQ bundle and the 4 additional FQ's mentioned above are out of stock, don't worry. I would instead suggest you use our numbered key of 0-17 and gather other fabrics and label each print 0-17. That way you can still follow along with our numbered diagram. Remember you will need two FQs of numbers 04, 09, 11, 15, when using our cutting instructions from the quilt pattern. 

Find all our Jane Austen Quilt products online at Sew & Quilt. 

I really hope you have fun making this quilt, it is a beautiful design that has stood the test of time and will no doubt become a family heirloom - which is what we are all about at Sew & Quilt; 'Creating your future heirloom today!'.

Please share your versions of the Sew & Quilt Jane Austen quilt pattern, using the hashtag #JaneAustenEPPQuilt so we can share progress and updates online!