Tips for Designing and Making a Quilt

Quilting can be an enjoyable hobby or a profitable business. It is not only relaxing and artistic; it is also useful. Quilts are for warmth and comfort. Some people design quilts for beauty. An artistic quilt can be anything from a small wall hanging to a very large king size quilt. The same is true for quilts you intend to use for warmth, depending on its use.

I am a member of a local quilt club. We get together once a month and design, cut, sew, tie and bind quilts. We have given our quilts to the needy in our area. Some of our quilts go to the homeless, others to low-income families, and families that have had a recent disaster, such as a fire. Some of our quilts go to the hospitals for newborns or nursing homes for the elderly. Others go to the fire departments for children who were in a traffic accident. We also have made teddy bears and other stuffed animals for them. We have helped cancer patients with our sewing by making chemo hats, lap quilts, wheelchair bags, and other helpful items.

A quilt is three layers of cloth. The first layer is the top, which is either whole cloth or pieced. Below the top is the batting. The bottom layer is the backing. This is your quilt sandwich. There are many types of quilts and quilt designs. To make a whole cloth quilt, use one piece of fabric for the top and one for the backing. Make a patchwork quilt from many different fabrics, sewn together in many different ways.

Quilt designing is a matter of personal taste. I start designing a quilt by first deciding on how I intend to use it. Will it be for me or someone else? Will it be for my bed? Will it be for a baby? Will it be a lap quilt for a nursing home? That will help me decide on the size. Next, I choose my design, based on the size. If it is a very large quilt, I will usually make larger squares. The squares you make would be the size of your choice. You can figure out how many squares you need by dividing the size of the quilt top by the size of the block. An example would be; you have a 60 inch x 100 inch quilt top. You are making 10-inch squares. Therefore, you will have six squares across and ten squares down, giving you a total 60 squares. A whole cloth quilt is one piece of fabric cut to size for top, bottom and batting. A medallion quilt is usually done with a nice center design and borders around that. Patchwork quilts are made up of different size squares and blocks, and in many different designs. A quilt can be made from a pattern in a book, or from your own ideas.

Tools: You will mainly use the usual sewing supplies, although they do make many new tools to make quilting easier, faster, and more fun. The usual tools would include scissors, thread, needle, seam ripper (very important one for me). There are many sizes and shapes of rulers and templates. Rotary cutters come in different sizes also. It is best to use a self-healing mat with these cutters to protect your table or other cutting surface.

Once you have all the tools you will need, it is time to begin. Choose your pattern or design. Preferably, start with a simple project like a potholder or placemat. Calculate the materials you will need. Purchase your fabric, batting, backing, thread, binding, and any tools that you may want or need. You may also use scraps of fabric that you already have around the house. Some people even cut up used clothes, then cut them into squares for their quilts.

Most patterns will tell you how many squares of each color and size you will need. Start by cutting out all your pieces. Sew your pieces together in the suggested manner and assemble your quilt top. Your project can be machine or hand quilted.

If you are Hand Tying your quilt, you are ready to make your quilt sandwich. When your top is finished, cut your batting and backing a couple inches larger than your quilt top all the way around. You will lay the quilt back face down on your table. You can use masking tape to hold it in place. Place the batting down on top of that and straighten as flat as you can. Then you add your quilt top face up. Starting in the middle of the quilt, use safety pins to pin all three layers together. You should place the pins about four inches apart in all directions. A good way to measure without a ruler is to use your four fingers and place between two pins. After you have finished, you may tie your quilt with either yarn or embroidery floss. You can also decide whether you will use matching or contrasting thread. It all depends upon the look that you want. You can mark where you will tie (approximately every four inches) with a fabric marking pencil, or you can guess and put one knot in each corner or tip of stars, or other distinctive points. You thread your needle and start sewing a double knot in each marked point and tie off. After you tie all your points, you can remove the pins and masking tape. It is now ready to bind.

To machine quilt your project, you can send it out to a professional quilter, or you can use your own sewing machine if the project is not too large. One way to machine quilt is stitch-in-the-ditch quilting, which means you sew along each seam on the quilt (that seems to be the easiest for a beginner). You can stitch designs such as stars, hearts or flowers and leaves. This is done either by free hand or by using a stencil. Another form of quilting is meandering. This is sewing in small curvy lines without crossing over another stitched line, to fill in the spaces. There are many other ways to quilt your project.

To bind your quilt, you will need bias tape or you can make your own. You can choose how wide you want your binding to be. Purchased bias tape is easiest. If you would like to make your own there are many places to find directions. I generally use 2 ¼ inches. Cut enough strips to make it reach all the way around the quilt plus a few inches. After all your strips are cut, you will place them end to end, with right sides together. Sew at a 45-degree line angle from one corner to the other. When it is long enough to go all the way around your quilt, (the measurement = length x two plus the height x two, and add five inches). Take the long strip to the ironing board. Fold the strips wrong sides together in half. Iron all the way down. Now open the strips and iron the two sides in towards the center fold. To sew the binding onto the quilt, open the binding and place the right side of binding to the right side of the quilt top. Sew along the first fold line, leaving a few inches open to overlap the end of the binding. The next step is to fold the binding along the center fold line and turn towards the backing of the quilt. On the last folded line, you will tuck in and fold both thicknesses down, so there is no raw edge showing on either side of the quilt. This may be hand or machine sewn.

Quilting is fun and relaxing. It is not only an enjoyable hobby; it can be quite profitable too.

Victoria Willame
8-7-07