Patchwork quilt

A patchwork quilt is a quilt in which the top layer may consist of pieces of fabric sewn together to form a design. Originally, this was to make full use of left-over scraps of fabric, but now fabric is often bought specially for a specific design. Fabrics are now often sold in quarter meters (or quarter yards in the United States). A "fat quarter" is one square meter (or one yard by the width of the fabric, typically 42-44") folded into four and cut along the folds, thus giving a relatively square piece of fabric 50 cm on a side, as opposed to buying a quarter of a meter off the roll, resulting in a long thin piece that is only 25 cm wide.

Designs can be geometric and formal or imaginative. Patchwork blocks were initially created individually, accumulated over time, by use of scrap and salvaged material. Geometric designs were the most efficient way to aggregate fabric into useful units. Applique, where a piece of fabric is layered on top of the a base or "ground" fabric and then the cut edges are folded under and sewn down, is not limited to simple geometric designs. Early uses of applique in the United States included efforts to expand the effect of expensive, imported European fabrics in early America. The dense printed patterns were cut out, spread apart on a background of plain fabric, allowing the effect of the rare fabric to spread further. Broderie perse is a related technique, where selections of printed fabric are cut out, and sewn in place to produce the effect of a custom printed cloth. Reverse appliqué involves cutting the ground fabric, and placing another fabric beneath the opening. The raw, cut edges are folded under, and sewn onto the smaller piece of fabric below, creating a new design.

Additional design options are provided by quilting techniques that alter the texture of the quilt. These include: trapunto (where additional batting to be sewn through is stuffed into a discrete section of the quilting), cording (where cotton cording or yarn are pulled between quilting lines that form channels), and stipple quilting (where dense, closely spaced quilting causes the batting to be more compressed than it is in adjacent areas). Another, more casual option is to "tie" the quilt. Heavy thread or yarn is used to tie all three layers together at points across the surface of the quilt.

The quilt is formed of three layers: the patchwork quilt top, a layer of insulation wadding (batting), and a layer of backing material. These three layers are stitched together ("quilted"), either by hand or machine. The quilting can either outline the patchwork motifs, or be a completely independent design, for when quilting, the design may not necessarily follow the patchwork design, and the design of the quilting may play off the patchwork design. Outline quilting is when the pieces of the pattern are outlined by the quilting stitches.

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Wikipedia