Early Quilts

The earliest quilts ever were made into underwear! Knights wore quilted fabric beneath their coats of armor to prevent chafing from the heavy pieces rubbing against their tender medieval skin. Soon quilts – which are just layered fabric sandwiches, sewn together – made their way to the bed chamber, where they were piled on the bed for warmth.

Aesthetic Quilting

As so often happens, utility gives way to decoration. Maybe the workers who were stitching the layers of fabric together got bored making long, straight lines of quilting and started making decorative, fanciful designs on their own. Or maybe a wealthy customer ordered a quilt made with decorative stitching. In any event, quilt customers came to expect a plain quilt top decorated with animals, flowers, fancy curlicues, and other designs outlined by stitching.

Patchwork Quilting

Practical craftspeople soon began making patchwork quilts out of thrift. Sewing small bits of fabric together to form a quilt-sized piece of fabric enabled people to reuse garments that were too worn out to be put on, but had areas that still had a lot of life left in them.

Thus, the quilts of the 19th and 20th centuries were practical and nostalgic. A teenage boy might have a quilt made of the shirts he wore when he was a young boy. A teenage girl admiring the quilt on her bed might remember the calico dresses she wore as a child.

Modern Quilting

As modern, machine-made quilts became commonplace, and commercially made blankets and comforters replaced homemade quilts on our beds, people realized the value of these homemade heirlooms. Antique quilts skyrocketed in value at antique stores, tag sales, and estate auctions. Modern homemakers and needlecraft enthusiasts began making quilts of their own, selecting fabrics for their color hues and their light and dark properties to make coordinated, patterned quilts. Childhood clothing still ends up in some memory quilts, but more out of design than necessity.

Social Quilting

Quilting has always been a social activity. Community and church groups still have old-fashioned “quilting bees” where quilts are spread out in frames or on tabletops, and everybody grabs a threaded needle and starts quilting and chatting.

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Basic Terms in Patchwork Quilting

This article will look at some of the basic terms that you need to make yourself familiar with in order to be successful at patchwork quilting.  These terms and phrases are used frequently in guides, instruction manuals, and patchwork quilting plans.  First up are four patch and nine patch.  Four patch is a division of quilt blocks into four equal parts.  With this many other divisions may occur but the basic 5 patch pattern remains.  Nine patch is a division of quilt blocks into nine equal squares.  This form looks very similar to a tic-tac-toe grid.   Again, with nine square more divisions may occur but the basic pattern remains the same.  The next term to look at is batting.  Batting is the layer between the patchwork quilting top and the back.  It provides the loft and warmth of the quilt.  Many different types of batting may be used with varying degrees of warmth.  Down, cotton, polyester, silk and wool are all different kinds of batt.  Batting when used as a verb describes the process of putting the layers together in preparation for patchwork quilting.

Fat eight and fat quarter are two measurements of fabric used in patchwork quilting.  A fat eighth is a cut of cloth that measures about eighteen inches by eleven inches rather than an eighth of a yard cut.   A fat quarter is a common fabric measurement in the United States.  A fat quarter measures about eighteen by twenty two inches.  Next up in a look at patchwork quilting terms is Flying Geese unit.  This is a popular small shape group that consists of a center triangle and two right angle triangles attached on either side.  A Fussy Cut takes a clear template for a particular shape in your design, then isolates it as a single motif.  It can be repeated forming kaleidoscope design patters.  Knotwork is a term that refers to patterns of a Celtic design and comes from the visual formed by interlocking of bias binding strips.

These are just some basic terms found in patchwork quilting.  There are many more that you should become familiar with before attempting to do any work.

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1. What Defines American Patchwork Quilting?
2. The Versatile Nine-Patch Quilt Pattern
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