Top Quilt Fabric Designers

By topquilt.com · Updated Oct 21, 2026 · 5 min read

TopQuilt is reader-supported. Some links go to Amazon, and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How we make money.

If you're searching for top quilt fabric designers, you're probably planning a patchwork project and want prints that stand out — or you're trying to place a style you've seen. Quilting cotton is designed in seasonal collections by named designers and produced by fabric houses (manufacturers) that distribute to quilt shops. Knowing who designs what makes it much easier to shop, mix collections, and find coordinating fabric later.

Designers vs fabric houses

A designer creates the artwork and colorways for a collection. A fabric house (manufacturer) prints and distributes it. Some designers work with one house for years; others move between houses. Fabric houses also have house styles and base cloths — so a designer's work feels slightly different depending on where it's printed.

Leading quilt fabric designers

Tula Pink

Tula Pink is one of the most recognizable names in modern quilting fabric, long associated with FreeSpirit Fabrics. Her collections use highly saturated color, bold large-scale motifs and a playful, slightly mischievous sensibility, with animals and creatures often hidden in the prints. Her collections are known for sophisticated color stories that range from jewel tones to soft pastels, and her basics lines are widely used as blenders. Her fabrics have a dedicated following, and collectors often buy whole collections.

Best for: statement quilts, fussy cutting, bold modern projects. Fat quarter bundles are a popular way to collect her collections: check price on Amazon.

Kaffe Fassett

Kaffe Fassett is an artist and designer known across knitting, needlepoint and quilting for his use of color. His quilting fabrics — produced with collaborators in the Kaffe Fassett Collective, including Brandon Mably and Philip Jacobs — feature large-scale painterly florals, vegetables, stripes and abstract designs in rich, layered color. His woven shot cottons and stripes are also widely used. His fabrics are distributed through FreeSpirit.

Best for: scrappy, color-saturated quilts and simple patterns that let big prints shine. Check price on Amazon.

Anna Maria Horner

Anna Maria Horner is a Nashville-based designer and author known for lush, artistic florals with a painterly, hand-drawn feel and rich, deep color palettes. Her collections often mix large-scale florals with smaller coordinating prints, and she has worked across quilting cottons and other substrates such as voile. She has long been associated with FreeSpirit.

Best for: romantic, layered quilts; garment-weight projects.

Alison Glass

Alison Glass designs for Andover Fabrics and is known for bright, clear color, geometric and botanical motifs, and prints that evoke hand processes. Her collections have included batik-style and hand-printed-look designs, and her color palettes are widely used for rainbow and gradient quilts.

Best for: rainbow quilts, modern geometric designs, bright blenders.

Carolyn Friedlander

Carolyn Friedlander trained in architecture, and it shows: her fabrics, produced with Robert Kaufman, feature line-based, architectural and botanical motifs in restrained modern palettes. Her prints read as textures from a distance, making them excellent blenders for modern and improv quilts. She's also known for quilt patterns and hand-sewing techniques.

Best for: modern minimalist quilts and improv piecing.

Zen Chic (Brigitte Heitland)

Zen Chic is the brand of German designer Brigitte Heitland, who designs for Moda. Her work is clean, graphic and modern, often pairing crisp neutrals and grays with accent colors and type-inspired or geometric prints. Her collections often come with patterns designed to show them off.

Best for: modern quilts with a calm, Scandinavian-like feel.

Ruby Star Society

Ruby Star Society is a design collective that produces fabric with Moda. It launched in 2018 with designers including Melody Miller, Alexia Abegg, Sarah Watts, Kimberly Kight and Rashida Coleman-Hale, several of whom had worked together before. The collective's fabrics are playful, contemporary and illustrative, and many prints use metallic accents.

• Melody Miller — retro-inspired, graphic prints with mid-century and pop sensibility.
• Alexia Abegg — delicate, painterly florals with a vintage feel; also known for sewing patterns.
• Sarah Watts — illustrative, whimsical prints often featuring animals and moody, saturated palettes.

Best for: modern quilts with personality, garment projects. Check price on Amazon.

Fabric houses with a signature look

Moda Fabrics

Moda is one of the largest quilting-fabric houses and works with a large roster of designers across traditional, reproduction and modern styles. Moda popularized precut bundles in standard sizes — such as Charm Packs (5-inch squares), Layer Cakes (10-inch squares) and Jelly Rolls (2½-inch strips) — which are now a staple of quilting. Its Bella Solids line is a widely used solid.

Art Gallery Fabrics

Art Gallery Fabrics is known for a soft, smooth, finely woven premium cotton base and a large roster of in-house designers. Its prints range from boho florals to modern geometrics, and the fabric's drape makes it popular for garments as well as quilts.

Liberty

Liberty, the London department store and fabric house, is famous for its Tana Lawn — a very fine, silky cotton lawn printed with small-scale florals and archive designs. Liberty also produces quilting-weight cottons. Tana Lawn is thinner than standard quilting cotton, so many quilters use it in small pieces, sometimes stabilized, alongside quilting cottons.

How to choose and mix designer fabrics

• Vary scale. Combine large, medium and small prints with solids or blenders so the quilt doesn't look busy.
• Use value contrast. Sort fabrics by light, medium and dark; contrast defines the pattern more than color does.
• Start with a bundle. A fat quarter bundle or precut from one collection guarantees coordination.
• Add a solid. Solids from any major house tie collections from different designers together.
• Buy enough. Collections go out of print; buy backing and binding at the same time.
• Prewash or don't — consistently. Saturated reds and darks can bleed; a color catcher in the wash helps.

Making a quilt for camping? Different fabrics apply

Patchwork cotton is wonderful for bed quilts and car-camping blankets, but it's the wrong material for backpacking. Cotton is heavy, absorbs water and loses its insulating value when damp. Outdoor top quilts use lightweight ripstop nylon or polyester shells with down or synthetic insulation, and they're built very differently from patchwork quilts.

If you're interested in making your own outdoor quilt, start with our DIY top quilt guide, then see quilt-making materials for technical fabrics and suppliers, DIY synthetic quilt for an easy first build, and DIY quilt kits if you want pre-matched materials. For background on outdoor fabric, read quilt shell fabrics.