LIFE IS PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER

Patchwork Quilts

Families are like quilts, lives pieced together

Susannah MacKinnie
2 min readAug 23, 2020

--

Image by Prawny from Pixabay

“Paintings, people really don’t understand. They don’t really get paintings. Quilts they do understand because everybody has a quilt in their house.” ― Faith Ringgold

Classic hand quilting is a slow methodical approach that requires stitching the cloth pieces together by hand to make the quilt top. Lots of patience and a steady hand are the secrets of hand quilting.

Many years ago, my neighbor made this lovely miniature quilt of our cat, Ray, who belonged to both of us equally.

Author’s photo

Quilting is the term given to the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually by hand using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. An array of stitches is passed through all layers of the fabric to create a three dimensional padded surface. The three layers are typically referred to as the top fabric or quilt top, batting or insulating material and the backing.

Quilting varies from a purely functional fabric joinery technique to highly elaborate, decorative three dimensional surface treatments. A wide variety of textile products are traditionally associated with quilting that includes bed coverings, soft home furnishings, garments and costumes, wall hangings, artistic objects and cultural artefacts…..Wikipedia

--

--

Susannah MacKinnie

Lover of collages, quilts, vignettes, and tone poem journals.