Quilting For Dummies

Cheryl Fall

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764597992
• eBook ISBN: 9781118054666
• Edition: 2

Quilting is a fun hobby -- but where do you begin? Get the know-how you need to create beautiful quilts and decorative quilted items

If you're interested in taking up quilting as a hobby or simply looking for new project ideas, Quilting For Dummies is for you. From selecting fabrics and designing a quilt to stitching by hand or machine, this friendly guide shows you how to put all the pieces together -- and create a wide variety of quilted keepsakes for your home.

You may think you need some sewing experience before you can start cutting and piecing, but that's simply not the case. You can use this book even if your sewing expertise stops after threading a needle. Quilting For Dummies starts at the beginning, helping you to gather the right quilting tools, fabrics, and thread. From there, you'll design your quilts and sharpen your sewing skills. Finally, you'll see how to piece your quilt together and add all the finishing touches.

The book contains illustrated examples, step-by-step instructions, plenty of projects and patterns, plus helpful advice on

• Performing simple stitching maneuvers
• Selecting the right quilting fabrics and threads
• Creating new templates to produce original patterns
• Designing your masterpiece
• Learning new sewing techniques and quilting fundamentals
• Making sense of quilting software
• Saving time with rotary cutters and other cool tools
• Quilting by hand or machine
• Getting creative with applique
• Choosing new sewing machines and materials

Quilting For Dummies also features more than a dozen patterns for projects to get you started and information on quilting software and internet resources. Discover quilting timesavers, ideas for displaying your creations, how judges of quilting contests review the quilted art, and so much more!

Part I

Gathering Your Tools and Getting Ready

In this part . . .

This part explains what makes a quilt a quilt and tempts you with the wonders of fabric. Every quilt is made from the same basic ingredients: fabric, thread, and a filler. In this part, I tell you everything you need to have on hand to make a quilt from beginning to end. I also share with you the must-have gadgets and tools and offer advice on how to select materials — including batting — appropriate for your project. By the time you get through this part, you’ll be on your way to becoming a true fabric-holic, greedily stuffing fabrics into every spare nook and cranny in your home in anticipation of the next project.

Chapter 1

The Art of Quilting

In This Chapter

Deconstructing the quilt

Exploring the history of quilt making

Appreciating quilting today

For centuries, quilts have played an important role in people’s lives, providing their makers and recipients not only with warmth and comfort but also with colorful, attractive works of art. Traditionally, quilts also have been showcases for the talents and skills of their creators.

Throughout history, most households, regardless of income level, had certain quilts used only for special occasions or when honored guests visited. Quilt makers put their greatest efforts into these quilts, using the best quality fabric they could afford and covering them with miles and miles of beautiful quilting stitches. Many of these rarely used “best quilts” survive today as a testament to the history of quilting and the talents of their makers and are highly coveted by quilt collectors.

In this chapter, I explain what a quilt is and document the quilt’s rich role in the texture of human life. I also share some of the newest developments in quilting and talk a bit about how quilting has become a modern form of artistic expression.

Following the Recipe for a Fabric Sandwich

A quilt — that soft, cozy, comforting hunk of fabric and filling — in its simplest sense is a textile sandwich; in fact, that’s how the quilt layers are traditionally described. This simple sandwich is what distinguishes a quilt from any other sewn object.

All quilts — whether intended for use on a bed or as a simple potholder — consist of three layers:

Pieced or appliquéd quilt top

Filling (called batting or wadding)

Fabric backing

The top, batting, and backing layers are held together, or quilted, using a series of basic running stitches. You can also tie the layers together by stitching yarn, narrow ribbon, or pearl cotton through the layers at regular intervals and tying off the ends. However you do it, your goal is to prevent the layers from shifting during regular use and washing. You can see a cross section of a quilt in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1: The layers are what make a quilt.

Some folks call various types of bedcoverings “quilts,” but if it doesn’t consist of three layers (top, filling, and backing), it isn’t really a quilt but rather a coverlet, bedspread, or throw. Also, although the word “quilt” is casually used to refer to a quilted bedcovering, many other objects — such as place mats, vests, wall hangings, and diaper bags — can be quilted.

The quilt top

The topmost layer of the quilt sandwich is the quilt top, which is typically made of fabric blocks that are pieced, appliquéd, or crafted using a mixture of both techniques. Quilt tops can also be devoid of individual blocks, made instead of whole cloth.

Piecing things together

A pieced (also called patchwork) quilt top can be made up of tens to hundreds of small pieces of fabric joined together by hand or machine to create a pattern or repeating design. Modern cutting and stitching techniques make the work of piecing both fun and easy to do. I discuss these techniques in Chapters 8 and 9.

Patchwork is the most recognized form of quilt making and was devised as a way to turn a bunch of fabric odds and ends into one cohesive unit, eliminating waste by using any fabric available. Over the centuries it evolved into the art form we know today. Patchwork uses basic shapes such as squares, triangles, rectangles, and hexagons to form patterns ranging from simple to complex. To create a patchwork top, you piece various patterns together into one block and then piece each block to another to create the overall quilt design. I talk more about patchwork in Chapter 4.

Layering up with appliqué

Appliqué is another method of creating quilt tops. To create an appliquéd top, you stitch various fabric shapes onto a base fabric. In the past, appliqué was used mainly for “best quilts” — the quilts used when company was expected — because of the money and time involved in making them. Stitching a piece of fabric on top of another piece wasn’t a very frugal use of precious fabric, making the quilts more expensive to create than patchwork ones. Appliqué also takes a bit longer to stitch than piecing, but the appliqué method allows you to create interesting patterns that can’t be pieced, such as dainty flowers with gracefully curving stems.

You can do appliqué work either by hand or by machine. Machine appliqué provides a variety of creative possibilities and is easy enough for even the rank beginner to master yet can be done intricately enough to produce a masterpiece worthy of a blue ribbon at the state fair. Chapter 10 covers appliqué in more detail.

Working with the whole top

Whole cloth quilts are one more branch of the quilt tree that bears mentioning. These were the fanciest of quilts, often created by wealthy women for only the most distinguished guests. In whole-cloth quilting, the quilt top consists of one large piece of fabric without seams (wide fabric widths were uncommon and very costly before the invention of modern fabric looms in the 18th century). This single piece is intricately quilted with delicate, closely-spaced stitching designs. One of the unique features of a whole cloth quilt is that it’s reversible, with the front being identical to the back. In France, these types of quilts are known as boutis. Today, whole cloth quilts are often referred to as white work or bridal quilts, and due to their intricacy, they’re still reserved for the best occasions.

The batting

The middle layer, or filling, of a quilt consists of cotton, wool, silk, or polyester batting (also referred to as “wadding” in some parts of the world). Batting is a very important component of a quilt; in fact, it’s the batting that makes a quilt truly a quilt. Without that wonderful, soft inner layer, you have a coverlet rather than a quilt. Batting adds depth and dimension to the quilt in that it buffers the quilt top and bottom, and it gives quilts the loft and coziness that make them so special.

Before the invention of commercial quilt batting, quilt makers used whatever they could find as filler. Wool was usually the filler of choice because it could be fluffed, laid out, and felted by dampening, pounding, and rolling the fibers until they meshed together. Quilt making got a whole lot easier when the first commercial quilt batting was produced from cotton in 1846. Cotton is still one of the favorite choices for quilt batting today.

I talk more about batting options and selection in Chapter 3.

The backing

The bottom layer of the sandwich, the backing, is a large piece of plain or printed cotton that may or may not be pieced together from smaller pieces to create the proper size. I talk more about the backing in Chapter 3.

After you assemble the three layers that make up a quilt, you have a sandwich of sorts: the quilt top and backing fabric enclose a layer of batting. The next step is to quilt the sandwich, meaning that you secure the three layers together by hand or machine stitching them into one cohesive and cozy unit.

“Quilt-thropology:” A Brief History of Quilt Making

Quilt making isn’t just an American pastime; it has roots in Europe, South America, and Asia as well. Quilts were essential articles in households of the past, but they weren’t used only as bedcoverings. You may be surprised to find out that quilts were used as curtains to keep out drafts, draped on supports and used as tents, used to cover doorways when no door was there, and used as petticoats and waistcoats to keep the body warm. Really thick quilts were even used as armor! Need proof? Head out to a Renaissance fair with a battle reenactment and you’ll see something very similar to the quilted armor of our historical past.

Because quilts were so useful, quilting lessons began early in life. As soon as a young girl was able to manipulate a nee...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Gathering Your Tools and Getting Ready
• Chapter 1: The Art of Quilting
• Chapter 2: Threads, Needles, and Gadgets — And All That Jazz
• Chapter 3: The Pièce de Résistance: Fabric
• Part II : Planning Your Masterpiece
• Chapter 4: A Patch in the Fabric of Time: Designing Quilt Blocks
• Chapter 5: Creating and Using Templates
• Chapter 6: Playing with Blocks and Borders: Which Way Should They Go?
• Chapter 7: Using Your Computer as a Crystal Ball
• Part III : Sharpening Your Sewing Skills
• Chapter 8: Cuts and Creases: Pressing Matters
• Chapter 9: Positively Perfect Piecing
• Chapter 10: Do You Know the Way to Appliqué?
• Part IV : Ahead to the Finish: Quilting the Pieces in Place
• Chapter 11: The Plan of Attack: Deciding How to Quilt Your Quilt
• Chapter 12: Assembling the Quilt Sandwich
• Chapter 13: Ready, Set . . . Quilt! The Ins and Outs of Quilting Your Masterpiece
• Chapter 14: Finishing Touches: Bindings and More
• Part V : Completing the Circle: Projects to Try
• Chapter 15: Fabulous Skill Builders
• Chapter 16: Mixed-Technique Projects
• Chapter 17: Projects for the Machine Queen
• Chapter 18: Small-Scale Projects
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 19: Ten Quilting Timesavers
• Chapter 20: Ten Tips for Displaying Your Art
• Chapter 21: Top Ten Criteria Quilting Judges Use
• Appendix: Resources for Quilters
• : Color Insert