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Introduction: What is a Quilt?

What Goes Into a Quilt?

Throw a stack of material together with a few seams, put it on a machine, and there you go, a nice new quilt. How much effort is that?  Okay, shamefully, that is what I thought when I was younger.  I really did not appreciate the true value of the quilt until later in life, with one exception, my grandmother’s quilt. 

Somewhere in my young mind, I did understand that this quilt was special.  I didn’t want anything to happen to it.  I kept it in a plastic bag with a zipper and never touched it.  It moved over 17 times from each apartment/house, throughout the years.

When I started quilting, I started with an old unfinished hand sewn quilt of my grandmother’s.  After getting achy hands and pokes in my fingers, I realized that hand quilting was an incredible gift in unmeasurable value.  As I sewed, I felt so inept.  I asked myself. How did women make such beautiful quilts and not have their fingers feel like they were falling off?  I still do not have an answer for that question.  But, what I have come to know and appreciate is the amount of work that each quilt takes. 

I really wanted to learn how to quilt.  They were so beautiful, but I didn’t like the needle pokes. I discovered machine quilting through a wonderful quilting class/group at our church.  It took one quilt and I found that I enjoyed quilting.  Then, I stumbled upon Free Motion Quilting, a way to add the quilted thread layer to the quilt.  That was a light bulb moment, that led to the creation of Red Fence Quilting. 

fabric with batting

So What is a Quilt?

A quilt is an assembly of a top layer, batting, then a bottom layer of supposedly fabric.  Recently, I was at a quilt show where other materials such as leather and metal were used in a quilt.  In the case of Red Fence Quilting LLC quilted products, it will consist of a top fabric layer, cotton batting, and a bottom fabric layer.  A common name for this assembly is a quilt sandwich.  top fabric, batting in between and bottom fabric This construction is typical of a quilt as seen on RedFenceQuilting.com.

How do you make a quilt? We are going to explore quilt making in the next few posts.  There are four basic stages of quilt making for a quilt.

  • Stages of Quilt Making – Part 1 The Quilt Sandwich Design
  • Stages of Quilt Making – Part 2 The Quilting
  • Stages of Quilt Making – Part 3 The Finishing
  • Stages of Quilt Making – Part 4 – The Finished Product

Join me as we explore the world of quilting! 

Have a wonderful day!

Laura

****This is a Fall Colors Quilt is based on the Arrowhead quilt design by Anita Grossman Solomon and available by Quiltmaker.   This quilt started as a quilt group project.

**Post was written by Laura Ferrer and first posted 4/2017 on LuxuryPetQuilts.com.  It has been moved and updated and republished on RedFenceQuilting.com

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