Quilt Finishing Basics

You've just finished a quilt top (or inherited a quilt top, or purchased one, or found one in the closet, etc.). Now what? There are three basic ways to finish a quilt: hand quilting, machine quilting on a domestic (shortarm, or what you normally sew on) sewing machine, or machine quilting on a longarm sewing machine in a frame. There are similarities to all three methods; here are the basic steps.

  1. Choose your backing and batting material. Whoa! Bet you didn't know there was a step zero! Once your quilt top is done, you have two very important decisions to make -- what fabric to choose for your back, and what batting to use. These are not trivial questions to answer; there is a wide range of options.
    1. For machine quilting, your best bet for backing fabric is a multi-colored or tone-on-tone backing that will match the quilting thread on the front. You can think of finding a backing fabric that reflects the main colors of your quilt top, and you will be good to go. To help you out, I am now carrying wide backing fabric from Sew Batik; we can go over the options together to make the right choice.
    2. There is a wide range of batting available -- your choice of batting can depend on the purpose of a quilt (baby quilt? wall quilt? show quilt?), the warmth you would like to achieve (insulation value), and the drape or stiffness of the final quilt. Battings are made of cotton, polyester, wool, silk, and even recycled plastic bottles! There are a number of brands out there that are perfectly fine -- I prefer to carry Quilter's Dream batting, but will work with any high-quality batting you choose. Please, before you go to Joann and purchase the clearance batting special, call me -- I can recommend a batting that will work for your quilt. You have spent hundreds of dollars on your quilt top fabric -- invest a little in quality batting.
  2. Make up the "quilt sandwich". A quilt sandwich consists of the quilt top (the pieced together fabrics that we normally just think of as the quilt), the batting (the lofty inner layer that adds bulk and insulation), and the backing (the back fabric, which could be anything from muslin to cotton to another pieced layer!).
    1. In hand quilting, one generally bastes all three layers together, either with pins, plastic tacks, very wide stitches, or sometimes now with water-soluble thread. In this case, all three layers may be the same size, although it is safer to have the backing and batting be somewhat larger than the quilt top in case of errors.
    2. In machine quilting, you still have to baste all three layers together in the same manner as above. In fact, because the quilt is not hooped in this case, the basting often has to be closer together to stabilize the quilt.
    3. In longarm quilting, you do not baste the quilt. The three layers are loaded onto a quilting frame individually. The back layer is "stretched", or placed under some tension, both vertically and horizontally. This is why it is important in this case to have the backing and batting wider than the quilt top. The "stretching" causes some local distortion to the backing fabric, and you need 2-4" for that distortion to dissipate before reaching the quilt top.
  3. Next step: Actually sewing the three layers together. Quilting can be done using straight lines, all-over patterns, or highly detailed motifs that are custom to the layout of the quilt. For an overview, see the quilting patterns page.
    1. Hand quilting: Once the quilt is basted, small portions are placed in a circular frame ("hooped") and quilted by needle and thread. This is very time-consuming; hand-quilted quilts are therefore much more expensive.
    2. Machine quilting using a domestic sewing machine: The quilt is quilted by moving it around in patterns / lines underneath the needle of a domestic sewing machine, either through free-motion quilting or by stitching lines with a traditional foot. For larger quilts, forcing all of the fabric through the sewing machine can be physically difficult. Free-motion skills on a domestic machine take a long time to develop, but you can get great results from this method as well.
    3. Longarm machine quilting: Once the quilt is loaded onto the frame, the quilt is stitched using a longarm machine (with an 18" throat in my case), advancing the quilt along the frame until it is finished. Then your quilt is complete!
  4. Well, it's not really complete, of course. You can still see the backing and batting sticking out from behind the quilt top (you can see the "raw edges"). The last step in quilting is to "bind" the quilt, or to cover the raw edges with more fabric. Binding Example
    1. The easiest way is to bring around some of the backing fabric to the front, fold it under, then stitch it to the top. This is fast, but not very stable or long-lasting, especially if the quilt will be used on a regular basis. I do not offer this service, typically.
    2. The most common way to bind a quilt is through "french" binding. French binding takes strips of fabric, sews them together into one very long strip, then wraps the strip around the edge of the quilt to cover the raw edge. This is the most durable method of binding a quilt, and is my default method, unless specified otherwise.
  5. Finally, you have the option to add a "hanging sleeve" on the back of the quilt. This is a fabric sleeve attached to the backing that you can pass a wooden dowel through to hang the quilt on the wall. If the quilt will be used solely as a bedspread or comforter, this is not necessary. If you think that you might want to display the quilt as art, it is a good thing to add, and does not detract from the utility of the quilt as a bedspread.

Whew! That's a lot of information! I hope it helps in determining what you would like to do to finish your quilt!