Quilting Day 2025 is on Saturday, March 15, 2025: How can I make a quilt?

Saturday, March 15, 2025 is Quilting Day 2025. Worldwide Quilting Day - March 15, 2014 Worldwide Quilting Day!

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In 1991, the nation's Quilting Association made the decision to produce a big day to celebrate and encourage enthusiasts of quilting and also to encourage others to consider this charming and addictive craft. Quilting Day was created, and it has been celebrated since by quilt and patchwork enthusiasts every spring.Quilting is essentially a kind of sewing where small bits of fabric are sewn together. It's been practised for 100s of years and it is connected using the pioneering culture of The United States many famous quilting block designs, for example ‘Log Cabin’, ‘Wild Geese’ and ‘Tree of Life’ were produced within this period.You can mark Quilting Day by joining a quilting group and finding out how to help make your own quilt- you will find numerous classes through the country which will train you different stitches and embellishing techniques. If you're already a skilled quilter then why don't you share your ex with generation x?

How much material? How long is a piece of string? It's going to depend on the design and how large or small the pieces are. Typical seam allowance for quilting is 1/4" -- which means each piece needs to be cut 1/2" larger in all directions. If you want to make a 40x40" quilt from 10" pieces, you'll need 16 10.5" pieces to sew together -- 1764 sq inches of fabric to make a quilt with finished area of 1600 sq inches.

On the other hand, if you want to make that same quilt with 4" squares, you're going to need 100 4.5" squares of fabric, or 2025 square inches of fabric to make up that same quilt with a finished size of 1600 sq inches.

How time consuming is it? Eleanor Burns built her career around "A quilt in a day", and it can be done. I've done a couple of baby quilts in a day when I needed to, and that included both piecing a top and quilting. I used strip quilting techniques and what's known as "quilt as you go" to put the backing on, and produced some very nice looking quilts. On the other hand, this quilt: took the maker thousands of hours. How much effort do you want to put into it?

How can you learn to make one? Ask someone who quilts, or pick up a basic book at the library (Alex Anderson's beginning quilt book is very good, as is Carol Doak's Your first quilt book (or it should be.)

Or see if there's a Project Linus group near you who could use a hand: That's how a friend and I got her husband hooked on quilting -- we sent him over to the Project Linus tent at a sewing show and told him they could use him. By the end of the day he had an original quilt design in mind, and knew exactly how he was going to make it. And did.

Here are some easy quilts for beginners, some of which look more complex than they are:

(this is spectacular with most of the quilt a dark color)

What are the best tools to learn how to quilt?

The basic tools for making most quilts these days would be a rotary blade cutter along with a self-healing mat (see links below), at least one thick acrylic "ruler" (a good beginner size would be 6x12" or 6x18")... plus of course a simple sewing machine (preferably using a 1/4" wide foot if you have it), and some thread (various shades of gray will do for piecing).

All kinds of other things could be added, but those are really the basics unless you want to mark and cut all your pieces with templates and shears (seldom done these days).

You can buy a book but there's also loads of info online for learning to make quilts! (all kinds of quilts) --from individual sites with tutorials and discussions, to forums that deal with making quilts**, to video lessons at YouTube*** or other sites, etc.

**here are a couple of quilting forums that I often recommend to beginners, or others interested in quilting:

and

***here are a few results from doing at search at YouTube for beginner quilt:

As a beginner, you might also want to check out some of the other answers I've written to questioners at YA wanting to learn to quilt, including wanting to start with easier patterns, to understand some of the tools, etc.

There are links to all my answers about those things in this one particular answer:

HTH, and have fun,

Diane B.