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Fabric Panel Ideas – 15+ Creative Ways to Use Fabric Panels

When I’m looking at fabric I am not only thinking about a project I can make with it. I always try to come up with out of the box ideas to use it. Sewing with fabric panels will give you a ton of options. You can add a border or two around the quilt or even cut it up to make an attic window panel quilt. In today’s roundup I will show you the most creative fabric panel ideas that I stumbled upon while surfing the interwebs. But first things first, so ..

What is a Fabric Panel?

A fabric panel is usually 24″ to 36″ wide and 42″ high, although the size can vary. Fabric panels are also referred to as cheater quilts because it is soo easy to make a quilt out of a panel. You can literally add batting and backing, do some machine quilting on top, and ta-da your panel quilt is ready. It’s hard to believe but panel quilts are even easier to make than rag quilts.

What Can I Make with a Fabric Panel?

• Quilt Panels
• Wall hangings
• Soft Book Panels
• Apron Panels
• Christmas Stocking Panels
• Pillow Panels
• Placemat Panels
• Doll and Soft Toy Panels
• And more

Things to Make with Fabric Panels

Let’s start with a few panel quilt ideas. There are so many different quilts with panels you can make, just use your imagination.

3D panel

Use a fabric panel to create a beautiful representation of a scene viewed from a window with this pattern that shows you how to create a big fabric image with a wide frame in the color of your choice, set around a grid made of squares of a cut up panel picture so it looks like a window view.

by Maraquiltdesigns

Secret window panel

Take that fabric panel you just love looking at but don’t know how to use and cut it up in vertical stripes so that the central one is the widest and longest, while the ones after it on both sides are narrower and progressively shorter, then arrange them with a bit of space between them and stitch them to a single-tone base to get this creative decorative piece.

by Jordanfabrics

Ombre border quilt

Turn a fabric panel with a depiction of your favorite city into a modern quilt as you cut up small triangles in two colors of your choice, then pair them up with white fabric to create a frame with colorful corners, with a smaller frame inside it that has corners in the opposite colors, with the panel in the middle as the main feature of the quilt.

by Rileyblakedesigns

Adding 1 or 2 borders to a fabric panel to make a quilt

They don’t call fabric panels cheat quilts for nothing, and this lovely fabric panel pattern demonstrates that wonderfully, showing you how to use quilting fabric you have around to make a simple quilt that has a single or double frame at its outer edges and the panel inside them, together forming a quilt you can whip up in no time.

by Rileyblakedesigns

Mix and match panel and traditional patchwork

This fabric panel quilt pattern that will teach you how to enrich your quilts extremely simple, yet effective in terms of creativity and visual appeal by making a quilt rich with numerous standard designs like hourglass patches, polygon arrows, windmills, and checkered squares, combined with a few of fabric panel motifs of your choice stitched here and there.

by Diaryofaquilter

Turn a fabric panel into a pillow

If you find plain pillows boring and want to switch things up a little, take any fabric panel you like and use it to whip up a pillow that has a nice round cutout of the panel as the main feature, together with a contrasting edge around the pillow that has decorative pom-pom balls attached to it.

by Flamingotoes

Mini banner fabric panel appliqued into a pillow

Buntings make great decorations, so they can also make great pillow decorations, states this pattern for a pillow that has a frame around its edges made from a fabric panel, together with three rows of triangular shapes stitched onto it next to each other, just like those you can see on party banners.

by Diaryofaquilter

Bags out of fabric panels

Here’s one of those two-in-one patterns we all love, and this time it’s a quilt and bag combo made out of fabric panels, with the quilt featuring a fun 3 x 4 grid of tilted Froebel stars patches and a colorful outer frame, while the bags are made as simple drawstring bags, with colorful drawstring casing and panel motifs being the notable features.

by Abitofscrapstuff

Quilted toys

Give your little one a set of toys that no one among their friends will have, thanks to this idea that helps you use fabric panels to quilt toys in the shapes of farm animals, buildings, and even vehicles like tractors or trucks, all as flat little 2D toys, or step it up a bit and quilt parts of toys that you will later assemble to get 3D toys!

by Missouriquiltco

Making soft book from a panel

It’s important to get your little one familiar with books as soon as possible, and the best way to do that is with a soft book that they can’t accidentally tear, so choose a few fabric panels with some motifs you think would make a nice story, then follow these instructions to transform them into a book, and voila!

Soft book with Fabric panel

Snip up one or more fabric panels into small pieces with various depictions on the same or similar subject, decide on how you would want them to be arranged, and then carefully sew them together in the form of a unique novelty book your child will love to read and play with without you having to worry if they’ll bite off a chunk and swallow it like they could with a regular book.

Fabric panel placemats

Freshen up your dining room with a set of brand new placemats that you can create out of fabric panel segments, then make a frame around them for the finishing touch and they’ll be ready to wow all your dinner guests with their inventive look and originality.

by Jordanfabrics

Apron out of fabric panel

Your kitchen apron doesn’t have to be boring in one color or checkered, not when it can have a representation of a lovely scene like a snowy winter exterior or even a city skyline if you take a nice fabric panel and transform it into an apron with a high straight neckline and ties around the neck and waist.

by Thecraftymummy

Useful and fun, these fabric panel ideas show you that they can become a lot more than quilts that are quick and easy to make and that they can help you make many of your sewing projects much simpler and faster to finish. Did one of these creative ways to use fabric panels pique your interest in particular? Come back when you finish working on it and tell everyone how it turned out in the comments below. For news about updates and new posts on our website, subscribe to our