60 Fun Facts About Quilting

By definition, quilting joins a minimum of how many layers of fabric?

The layers are usually called the quilt top, the filling and the backing.

What is the insulating middle layer of a quilt called?

Wealthier Swedish quilters once used wool for it, while poorer ones filled quilts with linen scraps, rags or paper mixed with animal hair.

The word "quilt" traces back to the Latin culcita, meaning what?

It reached English through the French cuilte, and the first English use seems to date from the 13th century.

The earliest surviving European bed quilt, made in the late 14th century, depicts scenes from which legend?

Its Sicilian-language captions and grapevine borders survive in two sections, one in London and one in Florence.

On which Mediterranean island was the earliest surviving European bed quilt made?

It is made of two layers of linen with cotton wadding, and its raised figures were formed by pushing in rolls of padding.

What is the Italian-derived name for the "stuffed" quilting technique padded from behind?

The technique was used to make the padded inner-tunic collars of the Starfleet uniforms in Star Trek II.

The stuffed wholecloth quilts of southern France are known as boutis, a Provençal word meaning what?

Two layers are quilted together and cord or stuffing is worked into sections of the design for a raised effect.

Traditional Japanese sashiko stitching is best known for which colour combination?

Cheap white cotton thread and abundant indigo-dyed cloth made the look practical before it became decorative.

What does the Japanese word sashiko literally mean?

It began in the Edo period as a way to strengthen homespun clothes, and became winter work in northern farming villages.

Nakshi kantha quilts are traditionally stitched together using thread pulled from what?

Layers of worn cloth were spread on the ground, weighted at the edges and sewn with rows of large basting stitches whenever there was time.

Ralli quilts are traditionally made in western India and which neighbouring country?

One woman designs and pieces the top from hand-dyed cotton scraps, then family and neighbours quilt it in straight parallel lines.

Which company introduced the first rotary cutter in 1979?

It was designed for garment making but quilters adopted it almost immediately, replacing cardboard templates traced one piece at a time.

Traditional hand-quilting needles, smaller and stronger than ordinary sewing needles, are called what?

Their very small eye avoids a bump at the head of the needle when pulling thread through all the layers.

In a traditional Log Cabin quilt block, what colour is the hearth-symbolising centre square?

Light strips fill half the block and dark strips the other half, and layouts of the blocks get names like Sunshine and Shadow.

The Double Wedding Ring pattern of interlocking circles first came to prominence during which period?

Finished versions are still often given to commemorate marriages.

English embroidery and Japanese art at which event sparked the crazy quilt craze?

Cracked-glaze Japanese pottery inspired the fan stitching that turned up on so many crazy quilts.

An 1884 Harper's Bazaar article estimated a full-size crazy quilt could take how many hours to complete?

Crazy quilts rarely have a filling layer at all, and they favour velvet, satin, tulle and silk over cotton.

Which embroidered motif was often added to Victorian crazy quilts for good luck?

Flowers and birds were the other favourites, with fancy stitches worked along every seam.

Baltimore album quilts, with a different appliquéd design in every block, originated in which decade?

Most were signed, and a newly available indelible ink let makers add flowery poetry to each block.

A classic Hawaiian quilt's large symmetrical appliqué is cut from how many pieces of fabric?

The quilter folds the cloth into quarters or eighths and cuts the design out the way a child cuts a paper snowflake.

Hawaiian quilting descends from kapa moe, an indigenous bed covering made from what?

Kapa was beaten, felted and dyed in geometric patterns; because it cannot be quilted, every Hawaiian quilt uses imported cloth.

Traditional Amish quilts are pieced from geometric shapes using only what kind of fabric?

They avoid appliqué, butt their corners rather than mitring them, and are sewn entirely by hand.

Lancaster County Amish quilters are especially known for the Bars pattern and which other design?

Lancaster quilts also feature wide borders with lavish quilting, while midwestern Amish quilts use narrower borders and fancier piecing.

The celebrated quilters of Gee's Bend live in which US state?

Their improvised, rule-free quilts were honoured with a series of US postage stamps.

In which year did the touring exhibition that brought Gee's Bend quilts national fame first open?

It travelled to many museums including the Smithsonian, the first nationwide recognition of African-American quilt-making.

By what official name is the Gee's Bend community also known?

Its post office opened in 1949, and the 2020 census counted just 208 residents.

Harriet Powers, maker of the 1886 Bible Quilt, was born into slavery in which state?

Her two surviving quilts are held by the National Museum of American History and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Faith Ringgold's story quilt Tar Beach shows a young girl flying over which New York neighbourhood?

Ringgold, originally a painter, turned to quilts partly to step away from Western art traditions.

Ringgold's Tar Beach picture book was runner-up for which major American illustration award?

It did win the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration.

Which activist conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1985 after seeing names taped to a building like a patchwork?

The idea came during the annual candlelight march remembering Harvey Milk and George Moscone.

Each panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt measures 3 by 6 feet, roughly the size of what?

Many who died early in the pandemic were refused funerals, so a panel was often the only memorial they had.

In which year was the AIDS Memorial Quilt first displayed on the National Mall in Washington?

Its 1,920 panels already covered more than a football field, and half a million people came that weekend.

Roughly how much does the AIDS Memorial Quilt weigh?

It is the largest piece of community folk art in the world and covers around 1.3 million square feet.

Who narrated the Oscar-winning 1989 documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt?

The NAMES Project itself was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.

The National Quilt Museum, home of the annual QuiltWeek, is in which city?

The city has earned the nickname "Quilt City, USA".

The International Quilt Museum, the world's largest public quilt collection, is in which town?

Filmmaker Ken Burns' personal quilt collection was exhibited there in 2018.

Which New York institution's 1971 show Abstract Design in American Quilts first hung quilts like paintings?

That way of displaying quilts became the standard and shifted their perception from domestic craft to art object.

The founding Modern Quilt Guild formed in October 2009 in which city?

The guild now counts around 14,000 members in more than 200 local guilds across 39 countries.

The first QuiltCon, the annual modern-quilting convention, was held in February 2013 in which city?

Its quilt show features more than 400 juried modern quilts alongside vendors, lectures and workshops.

The Rajah Quilt was made in 1841 by 180 convict women sailing from England to where?

Sewing kits came from Elizabeth Fry's prison-reform society; the quilt vanished for decades and was rediscovered in 1989.

Which suffragist gave her first speeches on women's rights, as a teenager, at quilting bees?

Bees were one of the few approved gatherings for 19th-century women, and men usually turned up for the feast afterwards.

The legend that quilts carried coded Underground Railroad messages began with which 1989 children's book?

Historians agree there is no basis for it in the thousands of slave narratives or other contemporary records.

What were bed covers with no filling layer, meant only for warm-season evenings, called?

They were never intended for warmth.

In the American Midwest, what is a bed cover whose layers are tied together with yarn rather than quilted called?

Square knots finish the ties so the piece can be washed without them coming undone.

Roughly how many block patterns does Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns document?

Most fit a grid: Four Patch, Nine Patch, Five-Patch, Seven-Patch or Eight-Pointed Star.

American patchwork quilting dates to which decade, when the colonies declared independence?

Early patchwork quilts freely mixed wool, silk, linen and cotton, and large chintz prints with small calicoes.

What was the name of the quilted medieval garment worn under or instead of chain mail?

It evolved into the quilted doublet, a staple of European men's fashion for about 300 years.

Which motif was superstitiously avoided on wedding quilts, in case the couple's should be broken?

Tulips were often used instead to stand for love.

The Native American quilt design of one large eight-pointed star is also known by what name?

Star quilts replaced buffalo robes as gifts at Plains births, marriages and tribal elections.

Seminole piecing developed among Seminoles living in which state's Everglades?

The nearest town was often a week's journey away, so nothing was wasted; sewing machines arriving around 1900 made the patterns far more elaborate.

Mola textiles, famous for reverse appliqué, are made by the Kuna people of Colombia and which other country?

Animals, people and mythological figures sit inside strong geometric designs that fill the gaps.

Which professional body did quilt-prescribing psychiatrist William Rush Dunton found?

He treated quilting as a curative activity and therapeutic diversion.

Foundation work, sewing fabric onto a temporary or permanent base, is also called what?

Pioneer women used old letters, postcards and catalogue pages as the foundations, and that paper has become a primary source on frontier life.

The earliest known quilted garment appears on an ivory figure of a pharaoh from which Egyptian dynasty?

A quilted floor covering found in Mongolia in 1924 is estimated to date from between 100 BC and AD 200.

Quilted bedding became common in Europe around the twelfth century after whose return from the Middle East?

European quilting dates back to about the fifth century, but quilted objects stayed rare until then.

In American Colonial times, most quilts were of which kind?

A single piece of fabric was layered with batting and backing and held together with fine needlework; broderie perse was also popular.

A 1620s embroidered yellow silk quilt, an early example of such fabric in Britain, came from which region?

Its ownership label links it to Leeds Castle and to a family whose member helped found the English East India Company.

The densely stitched North Country wholecloth tradition of north-east England is also named after which city?

Some are made of sateen fabrics, which heightens the effect of the dense stitching.

Tivaevae, ceremonial quilts given at weddings and christenings, are made by women of which Pacific nation?

Quilting is thought to have reached the islands through missionaries.

Egyptian khayamiya, still hand-sewn in Cairo's Street of the Tentmakers, differ from true quilts by lacking what?

They are suspended tent decorations with a heavy back and fine appliquéd top, used across North Africa and the Middle East.