Shawl Every Day 2021 - Day 51 - Anatomy of a Quilt
A quilt consists of 5 main parts:
quilt top, pieced or whole cloth
batting, to give thickness and body to the quilt
backing, generally left as plain fabric
quilting, to secure the quilt sandwich together
binding, to finish off the raw edges of the quilt
In the example, you can see the paw print fabric representing the top. In this case, it is a whole cloth piece, but this is often complex and consists of multiple blocks or pieces sewn together in a cohesive design. The batting in the middle is typically cotton or a cotton/polyester blend, and then the backing (solid brown in the example) finishes off the quilt sandwich.
I quilted the pieces together with a simple square spiral. The quilting can be as simple or as complex as you want. This is a way to be really creative in highlighting parts of the pieces or just giving the quilt an overall design to tie things together.
Most quilts are finished with some sort of binding, which I didn’t do in the example, but it’s a simple way to cover the raw edges and complete the project.
Shawl pattern is 22 Little Clouds by Martina Behm
