The art of holding three or more layers of fabric together by a stitch is known as Quilting. It is a stitching art to create designer product. Quilt can either be done by machine or hand. Special kind of thread and needle is used in the process of quilting. If performed by hand, quilting is done on a frame using needles which are specially crafted and are called “betweens”. Machine quilting is done on a conventional sewing machine and matching thread is used to bring about the design. An artist who creates quilt is known as a quilter. The three layers of fabric that are the top material, the sandwiched fabric and the backing material can be joined together either by straight, rocking or a running stitches. Quilting is done to create bed covers, clothing, wall hanging and other designer products.

There are various kinds of quilting patterns available. Few of them are:

• Ditch quilting pattern: A “ditch” can be created by stitching close to the seamline of a block, patch or a border. Quilting in a ditch is usually done on the side without the seam allowance, so that it is not visible.
• Outline pattern: This design is used to create quilt with a lot of strength. In this pattern, quilting is done roughly about 0.25 inch away from the seamline inside the patch, so that seam allowances can be avoided.
• Accent quilt: In this pattern, the quilt doesn’t follow; it rather compliments the existing seamline.
• Motif quilt pattern: It is a kind of quilting in which the quilt follows the design lines that is created on the top of a quilt. This gives it a very classy look.
• Selective pattern: As the name suggests, in this pattern only selective portion of the design is quilted to highlight those areas.
• Fill: The quilt is filled and the background or the space is flattened in the quilt top to make the primary design stand out. Various types of filling are done like an Echo, as it echoes the shape of the patch work by line stitches (2 or 3 lines) that are spaced around 0.25 inches apart; a Crosshatching, in which the quilting is done in grid pattern by creating straight lines. Grid pattern can be either diagonal, straight or in the form of diamonds; a Channel in which channels are formed by quilting in straight lines.

As it can be seen there is a variety of quilting patterns available, any of these can be picked to create designer fabulous quilts.

Quilting can be quite difficult for beginners.  A quilting needle puller can make quilting easier for you. You can learn more about it by clicking on the link to our previous post.