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Day 1 of TCBQ 365 Days of Did You Know?

I have often heard new customers in the shop say, I am not a quilter, I have only made one (or a couple) quilts. What does being a quilter really mean? My reply to that comment has always been, you only have to make one quilt to be a quilter.

This really got me to thinking about what constitutes a quilt. Lets be technically, if you have two pieces of fabric, with something in the middle, that you sandwich together, find some way to hold it together….isn’t that a quilt?

Whether it be a 4x4 blocks or an extra large king size quilt, hand assembled, handquilted with a million pieces, are they not both a quilt. So I went to my trusty google search engine and my bookcase of books, and found the technical description of a quilt.

quilt

pronounced /kwilt/

As a noun it means a bed coverlet of two layers of cloth filled with padding (such as down or batting) held in place by ties or stitched designs (webster.com)

 As a verb it is the joining together (layers of fabric or padding) with lines of stitching to form a warm bed covering or garment, or for decorative effect. (webster.com)

Quilts are made of three parts:

1 – A top of a quilt is often referred to as a flimsy. It is the most decorative part and requires the most time to make.

2 – The center is the filler. It can be anything from old sheets, flannel blankets, 100% cotton, wool, silk, polydown or a mixture of some or all of the above.

3 - The backing can be one piece (wide backing), pieced, cuddle, minky, fireside, and much more.

The three parts of a quilt are sandwiched together and then stitched or tied together so that they do not come apart.

According to Wikipedia, the oldest decorative works is the Tristan Quilt, made in Sicily around 1360. Part of it hangs in a museum in London, England and the other in Florence, Italy.

The most known quilt was made in 1863 during the American Civil War by Jane A Blakely Stickle (1817-1896), this sampler quilt is made up of 169 miniature blocks.

 The Dear Jane book authored by Brenda Papadakis, is a reproduction of Jane’s quilt pattern with over 140000 copies sold!

Whether it is the action of quilting or the bed covering itself, I stick with once you have made one, regardless of how well it turned out, you are a quilter…

WELCOME TO THE CLUB !

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