Quilting Trivia
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107 free Quilting trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This quilting trivia quiz is written for guild nights, retreats, quilt-shop events and anyone who has ever lost an afternoon to a rotary cutter. It runs from the oldest surviving bed quilt in Europe and the padded garments worn under medieval armour, through the block patterns, tools and superstitions of American quilting, to the art quilts, memorial quilts and modern-quilt movement of the last fifty years. Along the way you will meet the traditions that make quilting a global craft: padded work from Italy and Provence, reinforcing stitchwork from Japan, kantha and ralli quilts from South Asia, Hawaiian appliqué, Amish geometry and the improvised patterns of a small Southern community. There are questions on famous makers and famous quilts, on the museum that first hung quilts like paintings, and on the tool that changed how everyone cuts fabric. Easy questions suit beginners; the harder ones on dates, names and places will test long-time quilters. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia entries and museum sources, and each question shows its explanation and source after you answer.
30 of 107 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the strip of fabric that wraps and finishes a quilt's raw edges called?
Binding
Binding is added in the last stage of making a quilt, and strips cut on the bias stretch enough to follow curved edges.
Q 02What is the soft padding layer sandwiched inside a quilt called?
Batting
Batting, called wadding in Britain, fills the middle of a quilt; less wealthy Swedish quilters once used linen scraps, rags or paper mixed with animal hair.
Q 03The word "quilt" traces back to the Latin culcita, meaning what?
A stuffed cushion
Culcita meant a stuffed cushion or mattress, and Medieval Latin culcita puncta, a quilted mattress, also gave English the word counterpane.
Q 04Which legend is shown on one of the earliest surviving quilts, a 14th-century linen coverlet now at London's V&A?
Tristan and Isolde
Its Tristan and Isolde scenes show Tristan fighting Morholt, the Irish champion who came to Cornwall demanding tribute from King Mark.
Q 05One of the earliest surviving quilts, a 14th-century linen coverlet split between London and Florence, was made on which island?
Sicily
Made in Sicily around 1390, it bears the three hunting horns of Florence's Guicciardini family, who kept one section until the Bargello bought it in 1927.
Q 06Which quilting technique raises chosen motifs into relief by pushing extra padding in from behind?
Trapunto
Trapunto, from the Italian for 'to quilt', raises motifs by parting the threads of a looser backing and inserting rolls of cotton.
Q 07Boutis, quilts with raised motifs worked by hand, are a traditional craft of which French region?
Provence
Provence's boutis quilts get their relief from cotton wicks pushed between two layers of cloth with a double-eyed boxwood needle.
Q 08Traditional Japanese sashiko stitching is best known for which colour combination?
White thread on indigo cloth
White thread on indigo cloth is sashiko's classic look, and the running stitch is now popular again for repairing worn clothes.
Q 09What does the Japanese word sashiko literally mean?
Little stabs
Sashiko, meaning little stabs, began in the Edo period to strengthen homespun clothes, and by the Meiji era was winter work in northern farming villages.
Q 10Nakshi kantha quilts are traditionally stitched together using thread pulled from what?
Old saris
Old saris supplied the thread, and the worn cloth layers were weighted on the ground and sewn with rows of large basting stitches whenever there was time.
Q 11Ralli quilts are traditionally made in western India and which neighbouring country?
Pakistan
Rallis come from Sindh in Pakistan and neighbouring Gujarat and Rajasthan in India; the name comes from ralanna, a word meaning to mix or connect.
Q 12Which company introduced the first rotary cutter in 1979?
OLFA
OLFA, the Japanese firm that invented the snap-off blade, designed its cutter for garment making, but quilters adopted it almost immediately.
Q 13Traditional hand-quilting needles, smaller and stronger than ordinary sewing needles, are called what?
Betweens
Betweens are shorter than sharps, and their very small eye avoids a bump at the head of the needle when pulling thread through all the layers.
Q 21Hawaiian quilting descends from kapa moe, an indigenous bed covering made from what?
The inner bark of trees
The inner bark of trees was beaten into kapa, and Hawaiian quilting is thought to have begun when missionaries brought Western fabrics in the 1820s.
Q 22Traditional Amish quilts are pieced from geometric shapes using only what kind of fabric?
Solid colours
Solid colours reflect the Amish rejection of 'worldly' styles, the same rule that keeps printed fabrics out of Amish clothing.
Q 23Lancaster County Amish quilters are especially known for the Bars pattern and which other design?
Diamond-in-a-Square
Q 14In a traditional Log Cabin quilt block, what colour is the hearth-symbolising centre square?
Red
Red is said to stand for the hearth, and during the Civil War Log Cabin quilts helped raise money for Union soldiers.
Q 15The Double Wedding Ring pattern of interlocking circles first came to prominence during which period?
The Great Depression
The Great Depression made the pattern a favourite, and finished Double Wedding Ring quilts are still often given to commemorate marriages.
Q 16English embroidery and Japanese art at which event sparked the crazy quilt craze?
The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition
The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 likely drove the craze, and its Japanese art included pottery with a cracked, 'crazed' glaze.
Q 17Which magazine estimated in 1884 that a full-size crazy quilt could take 1,500 hours to complete?
Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar made the estimate as crazy quilts of velvet, satin and silk scraps, heavy with embroidery, became a fashion among well-off women.
Q 18Japanese-inspired stitching on Victorian crazy quilts often resembled fans and which other motif?
A spider and its web
Stitching shaped like a spider and its web, alongside fans, echoed the Japanese designs that American audiences admired and helped launch the fashion.
Q 19Which city names the 1840s album quilts with a different appliquéd design in every block?
Baltimore
Baltimore album quilts could carry a signature on every block, thanks to a newly discovered indelible ink.
Q 20Which actress starred in the 1995 film How to Make an American Quilt?
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder led a cast that included Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn and Maya Angelou in the film adaptation of the novel.
Diamond-in-a-Square and Bars quilts from Lancaster County have wide borders with lavish quilting, while midwestern Amish quilts favour narrower borders.
Q 24The celebrated quilters of Gee's Bend live in which US state?
Alabama
Gee's Bend sits in a horseshoe bend of the Alabama River, and in 2006 the US Postal Service put ten of its quilts on a sheet of stamps.
Q 25In which city did the 2002 touring exhibition that brought Gee's Bend quilts national fame open?
Houston
Houston's Museum of Fine Arts debuted the show, which toured museums nationwide as critics hailed the quilts as some of the most miraculous art America has produced.
Q 26Which Hawaiian queen stitched a famous crazy quilt while imprisoned after the monarchy's overthrow?
Liliʻuokalani
Liliʻuokalani's crazy quilt is still kept at ʻIolani Palace, where she was imprisoned after the failed 1895 rebellion.
Q 27Harriet Powers, maker of the 1886 Bible Quilt, was born into slavery in which state?
Georgia
Born near Athens, Georgia, Powers first showed her Bible Quilt at the 1886 Athens Cotton Fair; her two surviving quilts are in Washington and Boston.
Q 28Faith Ringgold's story quilt Tar Beach shows a young girl flying over which New York neighbourhood?
Harlem
Harlem-born Faith Ringgold made the rooftop of Cassie's Harlem apartment building the 'tar beach', and turned to quilts partly to step away from Western painting traditions.
Q 29Faith Ringgold's picture book Tar Beach was runner-up for which picture-book illustration award?
The Caldecott Medal
Ringgold's first book, Tar Beach was a 1992 Caldecott Honor Book, runner-up for the Caldecott Medal, and it won the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration.
Q 30Which activist conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1985 after seeing names taped to a building like a patchwork?
Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones had marchers write names of the dead on placards and tape them to San Francisco's Federal Building during the 1985 march for Harvey Milk and George Moscone.