It’s not Wednesday, but it was quite recently! So here is the fifth in my series of personal introductions to the crafts I do. (I started with knitting, then talked about sewing, then turned to crochet and embroidery.) If you do any of these crafts, I’d love to hear about how you got [...]]]>

It’s not Wednesday, but it was quite recently! So here is the fifth in my series of personal introductions to the crafts I do. (I started with knitting, then talked about sewing, then turned to crochet and embroidery.) If you do any of these crafts, I’d love to hear about how you got started, too.

Quilting always reminds me of that thing people say when they want to be witty about parachuting: “jumping out of a perfectly good aeroplane”. In this case, you’re cutting up perfectly good fabric – often into very tiny pieces – and then sewing it back together.

Seems profligate, when I put it like that, doesn’t it? But the roots of quilting (or at least the “patchwork” part of it) lie in thrift: it arose as a way of giving old fabric items a new purpose. When your dress wore out, you cut it up, used the best bits to make quilts, and made rag rugs or similar out of the damaged sections (and before you go thinking I’m an expert on that bit, all I know about rag rugs I learned from Laura Ingalls Wilder).

What I find thrilling, though, is the amazing richness of the craft that arose from the necessity not to waste fabric. (Yes, thrilling. This stuff makes me fizz with excitement. You should know that if you’re planning to spend any time here.) Even the simplest traditional block designs – log cabin, nine-patch, drunkard’s path, rail fence, flying geese (and aren’t those names evocative?) – can be implemented in so many different ways. And that’s before you go near diamonds and hexagons, or the mind-bending world of the art quilt. (Check out the Flickr sets of the Irish Patchwork Society – these make me grin from ear to ear.)

Nowadays, of course, we tend not to save our fraying shirts to make bedcoverings to keep ourselves warm in winter. Instead we go out and buy gorgeous designer fabrics (can we say Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassett, Denyse Schmidt?) – or just whatever is on sale at our local craft shop. But we still take them home, cut them into little bits and sew them back together again, just like our foremothers.

“Quilting” is used as the umbrella term for this craft, but what I’ve been talking about so far is really “patchwork” or “piecing”. Strictly, quilting is the sewing you do through all the layers (top, batting, backing) to finish your piece. This can be as simple or as intricate as you have patience for, and it can be done by hand or machine. You can do patchwork without quilting, and you can make a quilt without patchwork. Most of the time, though, they go together.

My first patchwork project was a commission for my mother’s friend: a baby quilt in pre-cut Laura Ashley fabric squares, which I made when I was around eleven. I did it the way she showed me, by tacking each square to a paper template first, and then whipstitching along each seam. (This is known as English paper piecing, and it’s great for hexagons. Squares are usually done by machine seaming.)

I loved doing it, and I made a couple of other patchwork things in my teens (a tiny cushion, I remember, and a waistcoat). But I didn’t make another quilt until my youngest cousin was born, in 1995. I’d bought Quilting for People Who Don’t Have Time to Quilta little while previously, and I’d been itching for the chance to give Marti Michell’s methods a try. So I made a cot quilt for my baby cousin, using “magic nine-patch” blocks, set on point. It was brilliant.

And actually, that’s all I’ve done. Somewhere in me is a raging thirst for quilting, which can fade to near-dormancy and then flare up like a chronic disease. I’ve read books, I’ve bought fat quarters, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet. I think it’s something to do with the scale of it. Quilting is not one of the more portable crafts.

It is, however, straightforward – at least while you stick to straight seams. I’ll leave you with the advice I gave on Twitter last week to a couple of friends who were expressing interest in getting into quilting. It’s not exactly comprehensive, but it does sketch the procedure pretty concisely:

• Yay quilting! It can be as simple or complex as you like. Sewing squares together will get you a long way.
• Get a rotary cutter (srsly fab), cut carefully, sew straight seams, measure often, rip if necessary, press seams.
• When quilt top is done, make a “sandwich” with batting and backing, and tie or quilt (which is a knack, definitely).
• Last of all, add binding to finish quilt edge. Start small, maybe, because full-size quilts are unwieldy to finish.

And that’s it. By the time you’ve done that a few times, you’ll be ready to tackle anything. (Or at least, that’s my hypothesis. I intend to test it as soon as I’m able. Watch, as they say, this space.)