How to Make a Quilt By Hand For Beginners

Learn how to make a quilt by hand for beginners. With this guide, you can avoid common mistakes and learn some beginner quilting techniques.

By Nancy Caduff
Updated on November 13, 2022
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by AdobeStock/Melody Mellinger

Learn how to make a quilt by hand for beginners. With this guide, you can avoid common mistakes and learn some beginner quilting techniques.

This article honors a gift handed down to us by the pioneer women of our country. . . a skill conceived in poverty, pride, and love and considered by some to be the only true American folk art.

I’m talking about quilting, the craft of taking what you have and piecing it together into a blanket… a craft which — sooner or later — naturally evolves into the more complex art of combining odd pieces of fabric into intricate patterns and designs.

I got started on this delightful pastime in the traditional way: I had eight beds to cover warmly and few funds to do it with. My only assets were a big bag of scraps and the memory of Mom and Gram piecing material for quilts when I was a child.

Since I’m a strong believer in the public library, that’s where I went for help and I recommend that you do the same. Glorious works have been published on the subject of quilting, and references to designs for the coverlets abound in all the folk history and antique books. Also, if there’s a historical museum or landmark house near you, visit it and copy down in a notebook the quilting ideas and patterns you’re sure to find there.

It’s odd that, among all the wealth of available reference material, I’ve never found a basic manual to show me step by step how to make a quilt. The fact remains that I haven’t and my first attempt — a nine-block design, of which there are more variations than minds to think them up — is known accordingly as the “Comedy of Errors.”

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