8 of the best Cathedral Window Quilts

It’s official. We’re smitten. We’ve long been fans of the three-dimensional, curved beauty of Cathedral Window quilts, but now we’re stepping it up a notch with this gallery of our favourite finds from across the quilting world.

Shhhh! Confession time – these aren’t all full-scale quilts: we’ve included a couple of smaller projects too for those of you who fancy giving it a go without committing to a whole quilt top!

Everlasting Cathedral Quilt

Designed by Lynne Edwards MBE

Lynne is one of our all-time favourite quilters and contributors. This design (pictured in full at the top of this post) pays homage to the traditional look of Cathedral Windows, while adding quiet calm through the white background. It’s one of five projects that Lynne shared in issue 18 of Today’s Quilter magazine.

Vintage sewing set

Designed by Laura Pritchard

If you fancy giving Cathedral Windows a go, but aren’t quite ready to piece-together a whole quilt top, we’ve got the perfect project to whet your appetite! Today’s Quilter’s Deputy Editor Laura Pritchard has created a free step-by-step tutorial to show you how to make a Cathedral Window pincushion.

Find out how to make it here

Chicopee Windows quilt

Designed by Jo Avery

We love taking classic techniques and giving them a contemporary update. So we’ve picked a Jo Avery design for the third in this pick of the projects. It was first published in issue 6 of Love Patchwork & Quilting magazine. Jo’s picked a rainbow of bold bright fabrics in modern prints to centre her Cathedral Windows and combined them with a fresh white backdrop to pull the design together and create colour-popping diamonds.

Fronds Cathedral Window Quilt

Designed by Lynne Edwards

We’ve picked another of Lynne’s quilts here, as we think it’s a great example of how you can make neutral tones really fly on a quilt. Lynne made this for an exhibition by The Quilters’ Guild in Halifax. “There was a size specification, so I reduced all the sizes of my folded squares and rectangles to make a more complex design in this smaller area,” she recalls. “I hardly ever use neutrals and earth colours, so this was a good chance to try it out and use up some of my fabrics that were sitting there looking sad and unloved. I used a real mix of fabrics and weights, including cottons and silks with a frame of linen that I textured with paint.”

Tallin Quilt

Designed by Art Gallery Fabrics

We never can resist the allure of vintage mid-century rich shades with a bright, modern twist. This stunning quilt features the Tallin fabric collection by Jessica Swift and we’ve got good news!

If you fancy making your own version, you can download the free Cathedral Windows quilt pattern here!

Windows Wall Hanging

Designed by Lynne Edwards

We were spellbound when we came across this marvellous quilted wall hanging by Lynne Edwards in her special supplement for issue 18 of Today’s Quilter magazine. Lynne gives a fresh twist to this classic quilting technique and here she uses nine folded squares as a base layer, with two fabrics making the overlying windows. We salute you Lynne!

Cathedral Windows Patchwork cushion

Designed by Diary of a Quilt Maven

Um rainbow windows? Yes please!! We stumbled upon this cushion entirely by chance while browsing Pinterest. The cushion itself is one of a couple of colour placement ideas that you can see over at diaryofaquiltmaven.blogspot.co.uk, alongside a handy tutorial for how to make a Faux Cathedral Windows Pin Cushion.

The Mae Quilt

Nothing beats a heritage quilt, lovingly pieced by hand or machine, but we’re not fussy about where we find our quilt inspiration for our colour combinations. This shop-brought quilt is ‘technically’ a bit of a cheat, but we’re rounding up our Cathedral Windows collection with it as it’s got a lovely country feel and we like the idea of adding a darker toning border to great effect to highlight the Cathedral Window circles pattern.

The Mae Quilt is sadly sold out but was originally available from Wayfair’s Nostalgia Home range. So even if this isn’t one you can find the pattern for, the colours and design are still well worth a note if you’re looking for inspiration for how to plan your Cathedral Window Quilt.

Zoe Williams

Zoe launched Gathered.how as editor in 2019. A keen crafter, quilter and sewist, she has worked with the UK’s best-selling craft magazines – from Today’s Quilter to Love Patchwork & Quilting, Simply Sewing and The World of Cross Stitching. With over a decade of craft publishing experience under her belt, she loves crafting with her kids and curling up on the sofa with a spot of hand patchwork. Zoe has previously written for radiotimes.com, Simply Knitting and The World of Cross Stitching and was previously Deputy Editor of Papercraft inspirations magazine. She has guest-lectured at Bath Spa University. She’s a keen quilter with 5 projects in progress at any one time and another 12 or so planned. Specialist skills include hand modelling for YouTube craft tutorials and fabric foraging (she has an inbuilt radar for local haberdasheries and community craft gatherings).

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