Unit 6: Bedding

Measuring the Bed and the Pillow Before You Cut

Bedding is forgiving in one way and unforgiving in another. The seams are long and straight, so the sewing is easy. But a pillowcase cut two inches short is firewood, and a quilt top pieced to the wrong width will never hang right on the bed no matter how beautiful the blocks are. The work of this unit begins with a tape measure, a pencil, and ten quiet minutes.

Moses was told to make the furnishings of the tabernacle after the pattern he had been shown. He was not asked to improve on it or to guess at it. That is a fair picture of the discipline this craft asks of us: measure what is actually there, write it down, and build to those numbers.

Measure the Pillow, Not the Old Case

The most common mistake in home bedding is measuring the pillowcase you already own. That case has shrunk, stretched, and been pulled out of square for years. Measure the pillow itself, lying flat and lightly patted down, from seam to seam.

Standard US pillow sizes give you a starting point. A Standard pillow is 20 by 26 inches. A Queen pillow is 20 by 30 inches. A King pillow is 20 by 36 inches. European pillow sizes vary considerably; 40 by 80 centimeters is common on the continent, and square pillows are also sold, so if you are sewing for imported pillows, measure rather than assume.

A pillow is not flat. It has depth, and depth eats width. Add about one inch of ease across the width and about two inches to the length so the pillow slides in without straining the seams. A case sewn to the exact size of the pillow will look strained, wear out at the corners first, and fight you every laundry day.

Adding Seam and Hem Allowances

Ease is not seam allowance. They are two separate additions and you need both.

For the long straight seams of bedding, 5/8 inch, or 15 millimeters, is the traditional allowance. It is generous enough that the raw edges inside can fray a little without the seam letting go. For enclosed seams like the French seam you will meet shortly, work at 1/4 inch, or 6 millimeters, on the first pass. Curved edges take the narrower allowance too, because a wide allowance cannot lie flat around a curve.

The open end of a pillowcase needs a deep hem, not a narrow one. A hem of about 4 inches, folded double so the raw edge is buried, gives the mouth of the case body and keeps it from rolling. That means adding roughly 8 inches to your cut length for the hem alone, plus the ease, plus the seam allowances at the closed end.

Write the arithmetic down and check it against a real case. Take a Standard pillow, 20 by 26 inches, a single rectangle folded so that two of its edges meet, one seamed edge, one folded edge, and a four inch doubled hem at the mouth. Half the cut width is 20 inches of pillow, plus 1 inch of ease on the flat width, plus 5/8 inch of seam allowance on the one edge that gets seamed: 21 5/8 inches. Doubled, that is a cut width of 43 1/4 inches, which still fits across 44 inch goods. The cut length is 26 inches of pillow, plus 2 inches of ease, plus 5/8 inch for the seam across the closed end, plus 8 inches swallowed by the doubled hem: 36 5/8, so cut 37 and stop fussing. Show your own work rather than trusting mine.

Sizing a Quilt or a Duvet Cover

For a duvet cover, measure the insert flat, then add about one inch of ease in each direction and your seam allowances on top of that. A cover cut too snug compresses the fill, and a compressed duvet is a colder duvet.

For a quilt, measure the mattress top, then decide the drop, which is how far the quilt hangs down each side. Add the drop twice to the width, once to the length for the foot, and add a little at the head for the pillow tuck if you want one. Then measure your own mattress rather than trusting a size chart, because mattress depth has grown considerably over the years and a pillow-top mattress swallows several inches of drop.

Remember that quilting itself draws the quilt up. Dense stitching through three layers pulls the top in, sometimes noticeably, so cut the layers with a few inches of extra all around and trim square after quilting.

Write the Cutting List

Before any blade touches fabric, make a list: piece name, cut size, how many. Then check it against the fabric you have. Quilting cotton usually runs 44 to 45 inches wide, which will not cross a bed in one piece, so quilt backs and duvet panels normally need a seam or a wide backing fabric sold for the purpose.

Cut with a rotary cutter on a mat, blade guard closed the instant you set it down, fingers behind the ruler edge and never in front of it. A rotary blade will open your knuckle before you feel it. Measure twice; the second measurement costs nothing.

Choosing Cloth for a Bed: Fiber, Shrinkage, and the Pre-Wash

Bedding gets washed more than anything else you will ever sew. A dress may see the machine twenty times in its life. A pillowcase sees it weekly for years. That single fact should govern every choice of cloth you make in this unit.

Prove all things, Paul writes, and hold fast that which is good. That is not a bad description of how a careful sewer treats fabric. You do not take the bolt end's word for it. You wash it, press it, look at how it behaves, and then decide.

What the Fibers Actually Do

One hundred percent cotton breathes, softens with age, takes a crisp press, and is pleasant against the skin all night. Its weakness is shrinkage. A cotton woven for bedding commonly draws up on the order of three to five percent in its first hot wash, though the exact figure varies with the weave and the finish. Three percent of a 42 inch pillowcase length is more than an inch, and that inch is the difference between a case that fits and one that does not.

Cotton and polyester blends shrink far less, resist wrinkling, and release stains more readily. They also hold heat against a sleeper more than pure cotton does, which some people welcome in winter and no one welcomes in August. Blends are a reasonable choice for children's bedding and for anything that must come out of the dryer ready to use.

Linen is strong, cool, and long-lived, and it wrinkles without apology. If wrinkles trouble you, do not fight linen; choose cotton.

Whatever you choose, weight matters as much as fiber. Quilting cotton is thinner than sheeting. A quilt top pieced from quilting cotton is right at home, but a flat sheet made of it will feel thin and wear through at the fold line.

Pre-Wash Everything, and Do It Now

Pre-washing is not optional for bedding. Wash and dry the fabric exactly as you intend to wash and dry the finished article, using the same water temperature and the same dryer setting. If the household launders sheets hot, pre-wash hot. You are deliberately spending the shrinkage before you cut, so that nothing is left to spend afterward.

Wash the batting only if its manufacturer says to; many cotton battings are meant to shrink slightly in the first wash of the finished quilt, which is what produces the soft crinkled look people love. Read the label rather than guessing.

One caution worth remembering: deep reds, indigos, and other saturated dyes can bleed. Wash them separately the first time, and check the rinse water. A red strip that bleeds into a white quilt on its first laundering is a heartbreak that a fifteen minute test would have prevented.

After washing, press the yardage flat before cutting. Fabric that comes out of the dryer wrinkled will not cut to an accurate size no matter how carefully you measure.

Thread, Needle, and a Test Seam

For bedding, a 40-weight thread is the workhorse. It is the standard weight for piecing, quilting, and general construction, and nearly every machine is happy with it. Heavier decorative threads in 30-weight or 20-weight belong in topstitching and hand work, not in your seams; put them through a regular machine's tension and you will spend the afternoon chasing loops and skipped stitches.

A universal needle in 80/12 handles quilting cotton and light sheeting well. Move up to a 90/14 for heavier sheeting, denim-weight cloth, or when you are stitching through a finished quilt sandwich.

Before you sew the real thing, sew a test seam on two scraps of the same cloth, folded to the same number of layers. Look at both sides. The stitches should sit flat, with no loops on the underside and no visible bobbin thread pulled up to the top. If the seam looks wrong, adjust tension or change the needle now, on a scrap, rather than discovering it after eight feet of duvet seam.

Pressing Without Damage

Set the iron to the fiber, not to habit. Cotton presses at a high setting, around 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and takes steam gladly. Polyester and polyester blends need a distinctly lower setting, in the neighborhood of 350 degrees Fahrenheit; too much heat will not simply wrinkle the cloth but will glaze it, leaving a permanent shine you cannot press out. When in doubt, start low, test on a scrap from the selvage, and work up.

Use a pressing cloth over anything you are unsure of. Set the iron on its heel every time your hand leaves it, and keep the cord where a child cannot hook it. A hot iron pulled off a board is one of the few genuinely dangerous things in a sewing room.

A Plain Pillowcase with French Seams That Will Not Fray

This is the simplest useful thing in the whole trade of bedding: one rectangle of cloth, a deep hem at the mouth, and two seams. The version taught here uses French seams, which enclose every raw edge inside the seam itself. Nothing frays, nothing scratches a sleeper's cheek, and the case can be laundered hard for a decade without a single loose thread inside.

Work heartily, as to the Lord, Paul writes to the Colossians. No one will ever see the inside of this pillowcase but you. That is precisely why it is worth finishing well.

Cut One Piece, Not Two

For a Standard pillow of 20 by 26 inches, cut a single rectangle 43 1/4 inches wide by 37 inches long. That width crosses 44 inch goods in one piece, which is convenient, and it halves to 21 5/8 inches when the case is folded: 20 inches of pillow, an inch of ease, and the 5/8 inch that the one seamed edge will eat. The 37 inches of length carries the 26 inch pillow, about two inches of ease, 5/8 inch for the seam across the closed end, and 8 inches folded away in the deep hem.

Cut on the straight grain, with the 37 inch dimension running along the lengthwise grain if you can spare the yardage. Lengthwise grain has the least stretch, so the case keeps its shape through washing. Square the end of your yardage before you measure; a cut taken from a crooked end will be crooked all the way down.

Hem the Mouth First

Hem the open end before you sew any seams. It is far easier to press and stitch a flat single layer than to wrestle a tube.

Along one 43 1/4 inch end, fold 4 inches to the wrong side and press. Fold that same amount again, so the raw edge is buried inside the fold, and press once more. You now have a doubled hem 4 inches deep with no raw edge anywhere. Pin it, or press it firmly enough that it stays, and edgestitch about 1/8 inch from the inner folded edge. Backstitch three or four stitches at the beginning and the end so the hem cannot start to unzip in the wash.

A stitch length of 2.5 millimeters suits this seam. Longer looks loose on a hem this visible; shorter is unnecessary work.

The Two-Pass French Seam

Here is the part that surprises people the first time. Fold the rectangle in half so that its two long edges meet, WRONG sides together, matching the hemmed edge to itself. You now have a piece 21 5/8 inches wide and about 29 inches long, folded down one long side, open down the other. That feels backwards. It is correct.

Stitch the open long side and the 21 5/8 inch end opposite the hem at 1/4 inch, or 6 millimeters. Backstitch at both ends of each seam. Then trim that allowance down to a scant 1/8 inch, cutting evenly; loose whiskers left behind will poke out through the finished seam like a beard and cannot be removed later.

Press the seam flat as sewn, then turn the case wrong side out so the seam you just made rides on the inside of the fold. Press hard along that fold, working the seam right to the edge. Now stitch again, this time at 3/8 inch, or about 10 millimeters. That second line of stitching sits outside the trimmed edges and shuts them in completely.

Turn the case right side out, push the corners out gently with a blunt tool such as a chopstick or a point turner, and press. Never use scissor points to push a corner; they go through the cloth more often than not.

When It Goes Wrong

If whiskers of raw edge poke through the finished seam, the first allowance was trimmed unevenly or the second seam was stitched too narrow. The remedy is to restitch the second pass a little wider, at 1/2 inch, which will swallow the strays.

If the case comes out too narrow to slide over the pillow, check whether both seams were taken at the intended widths. A French seam consumes the sum of both passes, so 1/4 plus 3/8 removes 5/8 inch from each seamed edge. That is why the cut width included it.

If the seam ripples rather than lying flat, you were probably pulling the fabric through instead of letting the feed dogs carry it. Guide the cloth; do not tug it.

When it is right, the finished case has a clean tube of stitching along two edges, no raw fiber anywhere inside, a hem you could stand a spoon in, and corners that are square. Make four while your hand knows the motion. A stack of well made pillowcases is one of the quietest, most welcome gifts you can carry to a neighbor.

The Oxford Border: A Flat Frame Around a Finished Case

An Oxford pillowcase is a plain case with a flat border, or flange, running all the way around the outside edge. The pillow sits in the middle; the border lies flat on the bed like a mat around a picture. It costs perhaps twenty minutes more than a plain case and changes the whole look of a bed.

The garments Moses was told to make for Aaron's sons were made for glory and for beauty. Scripture does not treat beauty as waste. A border on a pillowcase feeds nobody and warms nobody, and it is still a right thing to make, because a home is meant to be pleasant as well as sufficient.

Sizing the Border

A border of 2 to 4 inches, which is roughly 5 to 10 centimeters, is the usual range. Narrower than 2 inches and the frame reads as an accident; wider than 4 inches and it flops rather than lying flat.

Decide the width first, then build the cut sizes around it. For a Standard pillow at 20 by 26 inches with a 3 inch border, the finished case measures 27 by 33 inches: the pillow size, plus an inch of ease across the width and along the length, since the flange itself takes up the slack a plain case needs from extra length, plus twice the border width in each direction. Add 1/2 inch of seam allowance on every edge you intend to seam.

This is where an envelope back earns its keep. Cut the front as one piece and the back as two overlapping pieces, each hemmed along the edge that will overlap. The overlap should be generous, at least 5 inches, so the pillow does not push its way out. No zipper, no buttons, nothing to press around.

Assembling and Turning

Hem the overlap edges of the two back pieces first, with a doubled 1 inch hem, edgestitched.

Lay the front piece right side up. Place the two back pieces right side down on top of it, hemmed edges toward the center, overlapping each other. The outer edges of everything should line up all the way around. Pin generously; there are four layers at the overlap and they like to creep.

Stitch all the way around at 1/2 inch, pivoting at each corner with the needle down in the fabric. Backstitch where you begin and end, and stitch back and forth an extra time across the overlap, because that is where the case takes the strain of the pillow going in and out.

Trim each corner diagonally, close to but not through the stitching, so the corner will turn sharply. Turn the case right side out through the overlap, press every edge, and roll the seam between your fingers so the seamline sits exactly on the edge rather than curling to one side. Press again.

Marking and Stitching the Flange

The flange is made by a single line of topstitching through all layers, set in from the finished edge by the border width. Everything depends on that line being an even distance from the edge the whole way around.

Mark it. Do not trust your eye. Use a ruler and tailor's chalk or a fine washable marker, laying the case flat and measuring in from the edge every few inches, then joining the marks. Alternatively, set the machine's edge guide or move the needle position and run the presser foot edge along the case edge, but check with a ruler at each corner.

Topstitch with a stitch length of about 3.0 millimeters. Longer stitches read as deliberate; a fine 2 millimeter stitch on a topstitched line looks timid. Pivot at each corner with the needle down, and go slowly across the overlap where the layers pile up. A walking foot, if you have one, keeps the top layer from creeping ahead of the bottom.

Where It Goes Wrong

If the flange wanders, so that the border is 3 inches at one end and 2 5/8 at the other, the eye catches it instantly. Unpick and restitch to a marked line. It is a long straight seam and it goes quickly the second time.

If the border ripples instead of lying flat, the top layer traveled ahead of the bottom while stitching. Pin every 3 inches or hand baste before topstitching, and slow the machine.

If the corners bulge, they were not trimmed enough before turning, or they were not pressed sharply. Trim closer next time, but leave at least 1/8 inch of fabric beyond the stitching or the corner will pull open.

Press the finished case, border and all, and put it on the bed. Then make its mate, because a lone Oxford pillowcase looks like a mistake and a pair looks like a plan.

A Duvet Cover: Joining Panels and Anchoring the Corners

A duvet is a fabric bag filled with down, feathers, wool, or synthetic fiber. It cannot go in the wash every week, and it should not have to. That is the whole reason a cover exists: the cover takes the wear and the washing, and the duvet inside stays clean for years.

The woman of Proverbs 31 makes her own coverings. She is not described as buying them ready made. There is real satisfaction in a bed dressed in cloth you chose and joined yourself, and there is real thrift in it too, since a plain duvet cover in a store costs several times what the yardage costs.

Sizing the Cover

Measure the duvet insert itself, laid flat on a bed or floor, edge to edge. Add about 1 inch in each direction for ease. A cover cut tight compresses the fill, and compressed fill traps less air, which means a colder bed.

Then add seam allowances to every edge you will sew. At 5/8 inch, or 15 millimeters, on all four sides, that is 1 1/4 inches added to both the width and the length.

Now face the arithmetic problem every duvet cover presents. Quilting cotton and most quilting-shop yardage runs 44 to 45 inches wide. No bed duvet is that narrow. You have two honest options: buy extra-wide sheeting or wide backing fabric sold for exactly this purpose, or plan seams.

If you seam, do not put one seam down the middle. Cut a full-width center panel and two narrower side panels, and place a seam on each side of center. A single center seam falls right where a sleeper lies and is the first thing an eye notices; two balanced seams read as intentional.

The Flat-Felled Seam

Panel seams on a duvet cover run several feet and get pulled hard every time the cover is shaken out. Finish them properly with a flat-felled seam, the same seam used on the outside leg of work jeans. It encloses both raw edges and puts two rows of stitching under the strain.

Stitch the panels with wrong sides together at 5/8 inch. Press the seam to one side. Trim only the under allowance down to about 1/4 inch, leaving the upper one full width. Fold the wider allowance over the trimmed one, tucking the raw edge under, and press it flat against the fabric. Then edgestitch through all layers about 1/8 inch from that folded edge.

The result is a flat band of cloth with two parallel lines of stitching and no raw fiber anywhere. Use a stitch length of 2.5 to 3.0 millimeters and a universal 90/14 needle if the sheeting is heavy.

The common failure is trimming the wrong allowance, or trimming both. If both allowances are cut down, there is nothing left to fold over and the seam must be unpicked. Trim one, and keep track of which.

Corner Ties

Without ties, the duvet migrates. By morning it will have bunched at one end of the cover, and shaking it back into place is a two person job.

Most duvets have a small loop sewn at each corner. Make matching ties inside the cover to knot to them. Cut four pairs of ties from twill tape or from self-fabric strips about 1 inch wide by 8 inches long, folded and stitched into flat cords. Anchor each pair inside the cover at the corner, catching the ends securely in the corner seam allowance and stitching over them several times. Test one by pulling firmly before you trust all eight.

Some sewers add a fifth and sixth pair at the midpoint of each long side for a large duvet. It is worth doing on a king cover, where the center has the most room to wander.

Order of Work

Join the panels for the front, then for the back, and press every seam before moving on. Finish the opening edge on both front and back before assembling, since you cannot get at it easily afterward; the closure itself is the next subject and needs its own treatment. Then place front and back right sides together, stitch the three closed sides at 5/8 inch, backstitching at both ends of the opening. Reinforce those two points with an extra pass, because that is where the cover is pulled apart every laundry day.

Turn, press, and check the fit by stuffing the duvet in before you decide the job is done. A cover that just barely swallows the insert will be a wrestling match every week; if it is too snug, let the side seams out to 3/8 inch and gain a quarter inch at each side, half an inch across the cover.

Closing the Cover: Button Plackets and Zippers That Hold

Every duvet cover fails in the same place. Not in the long panel seams, which are never really stressed, but at the opening, which is yanked, stuffed, dragged, and pulled apart fifty times a year. The Lord's picture of the house that stood through flood and wind because of what it was founded on is worth remembering at a sewing machine: what holds under strain is whatever was built carefully underneath.

So build the closure first, and build it heavier than it looks like it needs.

Where the Opening Goes

Put the opening at the foot end of the cover, across the bottom edge, or on the back panel a few inches up from the bottom edge. Never place buttons or a zipper along the top edge, where a sleeper's face and hands are.

Whichever you choose, the opening edges must be finished before the cover is assembled. You cannot reach into a finished bag to make a buttonhole.

The Button Placket

A placket is simply a doubled band of fabric along each opening edge, stiffened enough to hold a buttonhole without stretching.

On each of the two opening edges, allow an extra 4 inches of length when cutting. Fold 2 inches to the wrong side and press, fold 2 inches again so the raw edge is enclosed, and press again. Before stitching the fold down, slide a strip of medium-weight fusible interfacing inside the fold on the buttonhole side and fuse it. Interfacing is what keeps a buttonhole from stretching into a slot over time. Edgestitch the placket down along the inner fold.

Space the buttons 8 to 10 inches apart, with one about 2 inches in from each end so the corners do not gape. On a queen-size opening that usually works out to six or seven buttons.

Make the buttonholes horizontal, running across the placket rather than along it. A horizontal buttonhole lets the button ride to one end and stay there when the cover is pulled; a vertical one lets the button slip out under exactly that pull.

Size the buttonhole by the button itself: the diameter plus the thickness, plus about 1/8 inch of ease. Test on a doubled and interfaced scrap first, every time, and slide the actual button through before you cut a single real hole. Cut buttonholes with a seam ripper worked from each end toward the center, with a pin laid across the far end as a backstop so the ripper cannot run past the bartack.

Sew flat buttons with a thread shank. Lay a toothpick across the button as you stitch, remove it, then wind the thread several times around the stitches beneath the button before knotting. That small stalk of thread gives the buttonhole layer somewhere to sit and keeps the closure from straining.

The Zipper

A zipper closes faster and holds the duvet in more completely. Choose a nylon coil zipper rather than metal; coil is flexible, quiet, and will not press a cold ridge against anyone. Buy one at least as long as the opening you want, since a coil zipper can be shortened by stitching a new stop across the teeth and cutting beyond it.

Install it in a seam, as a centered zipper: the zipper sits under a basted seam and shows a line of topstitching on each side of it. Stitch the opening edge closed at 5/8 inch, using a long basting stitch of 5 millimeters across the length the zipper will occupy and a normal 2.5 millimeter stitch, well backstitched, at each end beyond it. Press the seam open. Center the closed zipper face down over the pressed-open seam allowance, pin or tape it in place, and stitch both sides and both ends from the right side with a zipper foot, about 3/8 inch from the seamline. Then pick out the basting with a seam ripper and the zipper is revealed underneath.

Stitch slowly and stop with the needle down to move the pull out of your way; running the presser foot over the pull will deflect the seam and can break a needle.

Trouble at the Closure

If a buttonhole stretches and the button escapes, the placket lacked interfacing. If the corners of the opening gape, no button was set close enough to the end. If a zipper seam ripples, the two sides were not fed evenly; stitch both sides in the same direction, from the same end, rather than up one side and down the other.

And if the fabric tears out at either end of the opening under hard use, that is where the reinforcing bartack belongs: a short run of tight zigzag or several passes of straight stitching, done now, before the first laundry day rather than after it.

Piecing a Strip Quilt Top: The Quarter Inch That Governs Everything

Patchwork is the joining of small geometric pieces into a larger designed whole. A strip quilt is the plainest form of it and the best place to learn, because there are no points to match and no set-in corners. All you must do is cut straight, sew a consistent seam, and press well. Those three things are the whole of piecing, and they are harder than they sound.

Isaiah describes the crooked made straight and the rough places made plain. The prophet is speaking of the way prepared for the Lord, not of quilting, but the image sits comfortably over a pressing board. Half of piecing is patiently straightening what came out crooked.

Cut on the Straight Grain

Straight grain runs parallel to the warp and weft threads of the woven cloth. Cut along it and the strip holds its shape. Cut on the bias, diagonally across the grain, and the strip stretches like elastic, wavers under the presser foot, and ruins every measurement downstream. Bias has its uses, but not here.

Square the end of the pressed yardage against a ruler, then cut strips 2 1/2 inches wide across the width of the fabric. Keep the ruler firmly planted, keep every finger behind its edge, and roll the rotary cutter away from your body on a mat. Close the blade guard when you set the cutter down, every single time, without exception. That habit is the difference between a long sewing life and a trip for stitches.

Check a strip every four or five cuts by measuring it end to end. If the ruler creeps, strips develop a slight wedge shape and the quilt top will bow.

The Scant Quarter Inch

Quilt piecing is done at a quarter inch, 6 millimeters, and by long convention it is a scant quarter, a thread or two under the full measure. The reason is simple: pressing the seam to one side takes up a small amount of fabric, and the scant seam gives that back.

Prove your seam before you trust it. Cut three strips 2 1/2 inches wide, sew them together with your intended seam, press, and measure across. The joined piece should measure exactly 6 1/2 inches. Three strips at 2 1/2 inches is 7 1/2 inches of cloth, minus four seam allowances of a quarter inch each, which is one inch. If the result is narrower than 6 1/2, your seam is too wide; if wider, too narrow. Adjust the needle position or the guide and test again.

That single test, which takes ten minutes, prevents the most common failure in patchwork: blocks that will not come to the right size because the seam allowance drifted from one seam to the next.

Set the stitch length to about 2.0 millimeters for piecing. Shorter stitches hold the pieces securely inside the quilt where the seams are never backstitched, since crossing seams lock the ends.

Chain Piecing and Pressing

Feed pairs of strips under the needle one after another without cutting the thread between them. The pairs come off in a chain like laundry on a line, then you clip them apart. It saves thread and a great deal of time.

Press after every seam, not at the end. Press the seam flat as sewn first, which settles the stitches into the cloth, then open the pair and press the allowance to one side, usually toward the darker fabric so it does not shadow through a light strip.

Use the iron by lifting and setting it down, not by sliding it back and forth. Sliding pushes the seam and stretches the strip into a curve, and a stretched strip cannot be talked back into shape.

Assembling and Squaring

Sew strips into pairs, pairs into fours, and fours into the full top. Alternate the direction you sew each seam, starting one at the top and the next at the bottom, so that any tiny stretch introduced by the feed dogs cancels rather than accumulates. A top pieced entirely in one direction will lean.

When the top is done, lay it on a flat floor and check the edges with a long ruler. Trim only what must be trimmed to make the edges straight and the corners square. Do not trim so aggressively that you cut into the seam intersections near the edge; leave at least a quarter inch beyond them.

If the center of the top puffs up while the edges lie flat, seams were sewn too tightly around the outside. If waves ripple at the edges, the outer strips were stretched. Both can usually be eased out by careful pressing before the layers go together, and both are far easier to prevent than to cure.

Making the Quilt Sandwich: Batting, Backing, and Basting

A quilt is three layers: the top, the batting in the middle, and the backing. The quilting stitches hold all three together, and that is the entire definition. Everything else is variation.

Basting is the step that beginners skip, and skipping it is why their first quilt has folds pleated into the back that no amount of unpicking can hide. James says to let patience have her perfect work. Basting is an hour of tedious, unglamorous crawling on a floor that pays for itself many times over in the hours that follow.

Choosing Batting

Batting, also called wadding, is the insulating middle layer. It is sold in cotton, polyester, wool, and blends, and in different lofts. Loft is the height and fluffiness of the batting; it governs warmth for the weight and also how hard the quilt is to stitch through.

Low-loft cotton batting is the easiest to handle and the friendliest under a home machine. It lies flat, it does not fight the presser foot, and it gives a quilt that soft, slightly crinkled look after the first wash. Polyester batting is lighter and warmer for its thickness but is springier, which makes a home machine work harder. Wool is warm and springs back beautifully but costs more.

Read the batting label before you plan the quilting design. Every batting has a maximum quilting distance, meaning the furthest apart the lines of stitching may be before the fibers shift and clump inside the quilt during washing. That number is on the package and it varies by product. Design the quilting to meet it rather than discovering the problem after the quilt's first laundering.

Preparing the Layers

Cut the batting and the backing about 4 inches larger than the top on every side. The layers shift as you quilt; the extra gives you something to spare when you trim the finished quilt square.

Press the top and the backing thoroughly. Wrinkles pressed into the sandwich cannot be smoothed out afterward. Check the back of the top and clip any stray threads, particularly dark ones, because a dark thread trapped behind a light backing shows through as a shadow forever.

Spread the backing wrong side up on a hard clean floor or a large table. Smooth it flat and tape the edges down with painter's tape at intervals of about a foot. Taut is right; stretched is wrong. A backing pulled drum tight will relax after quilting and leave the quilt puckered.

Lay the batting over the backing and smooth it from the center outward with your open hands. Then lay the top on, right side up, centered, and smooth it the same way. Always work center to edge; smoothing from one side pushes wrinkles ahead of you into the far corner.

Three Ways to Baste

Pin basting uses curved safety pins, which are shaped to scoop through the layers without lifting them. Place them every 3 to 4 inches over the whole surface, starting at the center and spiraling out. Keep them out of the paths you plan to stitch. A quilt this thoroughly pinned looks absurd and behaves perfectly.

Thread basting uses long running stitches, an inch or more each, worked in a grid across the quilt with a large needle and light thread. It takes longer than pins and is unbeatable for hand quilting, since there is no hardware to work around. Use a light-colored thread; a dark basting thread can leave lint in a pale quilt top.

Spray basting uses a temporary adhesive, sprayed onto the batting, that holds the layers until they are quilted. It is quick and gives a flat sandwich. Use it outdoors or in a well ventilated space, mask off what you do not want coated, and follow the label. Do not use it in a closed room with children present.

When It Goes Wrong

If folds appear on the back while you quilt, the backing was not taut or the basting was too far apart. Unpick the affected area, smooth, re-baste, and stitch it again; there is no other cure.

If the top develops a bubble ahead of the presser foot, you are pushing fabric rather than letting it feed. Stop, smooth backward toward stitching already done, and let the machine take the cloth at its own pace.

If the quilt puckers overall after washing, it was likely quilted too sparsely for the batting, or the backing was stretched during basting. Neither can be fixed after the fact, which is exactly why the hour on the floor matters. Roll the basted quilt loosely rather than folding it if it must wait, and keep pins away from where small feet walk.

Quilting the Layers: The Running Stitch, by Hand and by Machine

Quilting is the stitching that passes through all three layers and holds them together. It is structural before it is decorative. Everything you have basted is now made permanent, and the humble running stitch does the work.

The Preacher says that a blunt iron makes a man put to more strength, but wisdom is profitable to direct. That is a workshop proverb if there ever was one. A dull needle turns quilting into a fight; a sharp one slides. Change needles when they begin to drag, sharpen your shears, and stop trying to solve with force what a good tool solves easily.

The Running Stitch by Hand

The running stitch is made by passing the needle in and out of the cloth at regular intervals. Every other hand stitch is a variation on it. For hand quilting you want a short, sturdy needle, because a long one flexes and cannot be controlled through three layers.

Wear a thimble on the finger that pushes. Quilting through top, batting, and backing means driving a needle through more resistance than you expect, hundreds of times an hour, and a bare fingertip will be sore within twenty minutes and bleeding within an hour. Blood on a quilt top is very difficult to remove.

Start by knotting the thread, entering the top an inch from where you want to begin, and running the needle through the batting to your starting point. Tug gently and the knot pops through the top layer and lodges in the batting, hidden. Then rock the needle up and down, loading two, three, or four stitches on it before pulling the thread through. That rocking motion, rather than one stitch at a time, is what produces evenness and speed.

Aim for stitches of consistent length rather than tiny ones. A uniform stitch of moderate size looks far better than a mixture of very small and very large. Check the back regularly; the stitches should be clearly visible there too, which proves you are catching the backing and not only the top and batting.

End a thread with a small backstitch, then run the needle off through the batting for an inch and clip the tail at the surface. Backstitch is the strongest hand stitch, made by carrying the needle backward against the direction of work so it pierces the previous stitch, and a single one anchors a quilting thread securely.

Sashiko

Sashiko is a Japanese running-stitch technique, traditionally white thread on indigo cloth, worked in geometric patterns. The name means little stabs. It began as reinforcement, a way of strengthening and mending working cloth, and became beautiful in the doing, which is a pattern worth noticing in handwork generally.

Sashiko uses a heavier thread than ordinary quilting and a long needle that can carry many stitches before the thread is drawn through. The stitches are deliberately visible, evenly spaced, and larger than fine quilting stitches. On bedding it works well as a simple grid or a repeating geometric pattern over a plain top, giving both hold and pattern in one operation.

Machine Quilting

A home machine can quilt a bed-size quilt, though it takes planning. Use a walking foot, which feeds the top layer at the same rate the feed dogs move the bottom layer; without one, the top creeps ahead and pleats form.

Use 40-weight thread, the standard weight for quilting, and a universal 80/12 needle for a lightweight sandwich or a 90/14 for a thicker one. Set the stitch length around 3.0 millimeters; quilting stitches should be visible and unhurried.

Roll or fold the bulk of the quilt to fit through the machine's throat and support the weight on a table to the left and behind. A quilt hanging off the edge drags on the needle and pulls the stitching crooked.

Begin in the center and work outward, quilting one half and then turning the quilt to do the other. Working center to edge pushes any excess fullness out to the borders where it can be eased away, instead of trapping it in the middle.

Keeping It Flat

Do not pull the fabric, by hand or by machine. Pulling puckers the top and distorts the quilt permanently. Guide, do not tug, and let the feed dogs or your needle set the pace.

If a pucker forms behind you, stop and unpick back past it rather than sewing on. Puckers do not come out in the wash; they only settle in.

Binding the Edge and Sending the Quilt Out the Door

Binding is the finished edge made by wrapping strips of fabric around the raw perimeter. It is the last construction step of a quilt and the one most likely to be rushed after weeks of work. Do not rush it. The binding is the part everyone's hands touch, and it is the first part to wear out.

James asks what good it does to see a brother or sister naked and destitute of daily food and send them away with warm words only. A finished quilt is one of the few gifts that answers that question directly. Cold is a real problem, and a quilt is a real solution, made with real hours. Keep that in view as you stitch the last edge down.

Squaring Up

Before binding, trim the quilt. Lay it flat, line up a long ruler with the quilting lines rather than with the wandering raw edge, and trim the batting and backing even with the top all the way around. Check each corner with a square; a quilt with three square corners and one that is slightly acute will never lie right.

Give the edges a light press. A flat edge takes binding far more willingly than a rippled one.

Cutting and Joining the Binding

Cut binding strips 2 1/2 inches wide across the width of the fabric, on the straight grain. Straight-grain binding is right for a quilt with straight edges; bias binding is needed only when the edge curves, because bias is what bends around a curve without buckling.

You will need enough length to go around the whole quilt plus about 12 inches for turning the corners and joining the ends. Measure the perimeter and add it up rather than guessing.

Join the strips end to end with diagonal seams. Lay two strip ends at right angles, right sides together, stitch corner to corner across the overlap, trim the allowance to 1/4 inch, and press it open. A diagonal join spreads the bulk over an inch or two instead of stacking it in one place, which matters when that seam has to fold around the edge of a quilt.

Press the whole length in half lengthwise, wrong sides together, so you have a folded strip about 1 1/4 inches wide with two raw edges together on one side. This is double-fold binding, and the doubled layer is why it outlasts a single layer at the edge.

Attaching It, and the Mitered Corner

With a walking foot, stitch the binding to the front of the quilt, raw edges aligned with the trimmed quilt edge, at 1/4 inch. Leave the first 8 inches or so of binding unstitched so you have tails to join at the end.

The corner is the only part that requires thought. Stitch toward the corner and stop exactly 1/4 inch before it. Backstitch. Take the quilt out from under the foot. Fold the binding straight up, away from the quilt, so it makes a 45 degree diagonal at the corner. Then fold it straight back down along the next edge, so the new fold is level with the edge you just finished. Begin stitching at the very top of that fold, 1/4 inch in. When the binding is folded over to the back, that maneuver produces a neat mitered corner on both faces.

Stopping short of the corner is the whole trick. Stitch all the way to the end and the corner will pucker into a lump, which no pressing will correct.

Join the two tails where they meet, fold the binding over the raw edge to the back, and secure it. By hand is traditional and gives an invisible finish: a slip stitch, catching only a thread or two of the backing and then a bite of the binding fold, worked with a fine needle. By machine is faster and perfectly respectable for a quilt destined for hard use by children.

On a thick edge, or on a fleece-backed throw where a folded binding is too bulky, a blanket stitch worked by hand along the edge holds and reinforces it without any binding strip at all.

The Label, and the Giving

Sew a small label to a back corner: who made it, for whom, and the year. A quilt outlives its maker, and someone forty years from now will be glad the question was answered.

Then give it away. There is always a cold house, a new baby, a widow, a family burned out of a home. Quilts made for such purposes need not be elaborate; a strip-pieced top, a low-loft batting, straight-line quilting, and a sturdy binding will keep somebody warm for twenty years.