#(I am not dissing my own creations she is just in an entirely different league of quilt making than I am and idk how else to word it)

[tj-crochets]

I have a very dumb question about quilts; so once you have all the squares planned and laid out, do you just like sew them together? And is there a special quilt stitch or something? And then what do you do about the back bc I assume you don't want all the messy stitching and flaps and stuff just out for all to see, and would it be the same process for the more complex quilts that have pictures on them?

Hey! Not a dumb question at all, I tend to skip a lot of steps in my progress pictures. This is going to be a long explanation, so I’ll put it behind a read more.

Everyone probably has their own version of quilt making techniques, but I personally stack up each row, left to right, and use a clothes pin to clip a piece of paper with the number of each row to each stack. Then I take a stack to my sewing machine, and sew the top two squares together, unfold them, put the next square in the stack on one edge, sew it, and continue like that through the whole stack until I have a row complete. Then I repeat it with the rest of the stacks to make all the rows. Once I have all the rows complete, I put one row on top of another, pin it in place, and sew along one edge. Then I unfold, add another row, and repeat until the entire quilt top is done.* A quilt top is not a finished quilt, even though it has all the squares sewn together. The next step is making a quilt sandwich (for real that’s what it’s called): you lay out the backing fabric (which is what’s visible on the side of the quilt that won’t be the side you just sewed together) right side down, then the batting (the fluffy-ish stuff inside a quilt), and then put the quilt top on top, right side up. You awkwardly crawl around on the floor (if you���re me, anyway) trying to make sure there are no wrinkles or folds anywhere in the bottom layers of fabric. Then you pin all three layers together. I use safety pins but I think there’s some sort of specialized pin that exists? From there, you take the completed quilt sandwich to your sewing machine. I think there might be a few different schools of thought on where to start actually quilting a quilt, but I like to start in the middle and work outwards from there. You’ll have to fold or roll up the edges of the quilt and put some muscle into maneuvering it around because quilts are a lot bigger than sewing machines. You can do decorative stitches, or freehand swirls, or draw hearts with stitches, or pretty much whatever you want.** I personally have only done what is called “stitch in the ditch” which is where you sew the quilt sandwich along the seam lines from sewing the squares together to make the quilt top so that the quilting isn’t visible on the quilt top, but you can make really pretty art with that. You can also hand quilt (aka hand sew the quilt sandwich together) or use yarn ties instead of sewing, but I haven’t tried either of those yet.  The last step(s) are taking your quilted quilt sandwich and trimming the backing fabric and the quilt batting and adding a binding around the edges. You’ll either trim them exactly to match the top or a bit bigger depending on which binding method you want to use; I’ve only made self-binding quilts, where you leave the backing fabric a bit bigger than the quilt top, fold it up over the edges and sew it down to cover the edges of the quilt sandwich. The main other method (as far as I know) is sewing bias tape/contrast fabric around the edges, but I’m fuzzier about how to do that.  All these instructions are about making a basic patchwork quilt with just squares sewn together for the quilt top, but as far as I know it’s pretty much the same method for other quilts. There’s just more steps because you have to make the blocks first instead of using premade squares, which can involve sewing together triangles or rectangles or all kinds of stuff. There’s a different method called paper piecing that’s more complex, but I think it's pretty much the same just more intricate? There are also quilt patterns that are essentially just one giant “block” instead of blocks sewn into rows and rows sewn together. Quilting can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be, and I gotta admit I like making the simple ones lol *this description leaves out, like, a LOT of ironing. There is so much ironing in quilting. Gotta iron at like every single step ** As far as I know, there’s no specialized quilting stitch. I just use a straight stitch for the entire quilt. By decorative stitch I meant like those stitch patterns on sewing machines that can make a row of cats or hearts or zigzags or whatever, but for sewing the quilt top together I’d just use the straight stitch.