If you are new to not only quilting, but sewing, the quilting terminology can be overwhelming (it was certainly a lot for me to figure out). It also doesn’t help, when people use the same words but don’t necessarily mean the same thing.
For example, when someone mentions quilting, they could mean an activity that encompasses all of the following:
Piecing
Basting your backing, batting and front together
Sewing the backing, batting, and front (i.e. sandwich) together
Adding the binding to the edge of the quilt
But sometimes, when someone says quilting, they are just talking about the process of sewing the backing, batting, and pieced front together (i.e. you are quilting the fabric). You can further break that down into specific techniques like stitch in the ditch and free motion quilting (FMQ). But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up and break down this terminology.
Piecing - Cutting out fabric and sewing them together into quilt blocks
Batting/Wadding - A layer of insulation between the fabric layers that gives warmth/weight to your quilt. It can be made out of polyester, natural fibers (cotton, wool, etc.), or a blend of polyester and natural fibers. There are pros/cons to each material so its something you might to research a bit before picking batting for a particular project.
Basting - Temporarily attaching the three layers of your quilt together (pieced front, batting/wadding, and the backing) so you can sew them together. Some of the most common methods is using pins or spray.
Quilting (the layers together) - Process of sewing the backing, batting, and pieced front together to permanently secure the layers. If you want to, you can use this as an opportunity to add another design element to your quilt based on how you sew the fabric layers together (i.e. color of thread, size of your stitches, the pattern you are making with your stitches, etc.)
Feed Dogs - Metal teeth that come up through your needle plate to help feed your fabric through the machine at an even speed.
Walking Foot - If you are looking up how to quilt, you will see walking foots come up a lot. You don’t actually need a walking foot for piecing, you can just use your standard presser foot. It’s when you want to sew your quilt layers together, that you will probably want to use a walking foot. Technically, you could just raise the height of your presser foot to accommodate the thickness of your quilt when sewing, but you would really have to work at making sure all the layers of your quilt are being fed through the machine at an even speed. A walking foot takes out that work for you by gripping the top layer of the quilt and moving it at the same speed as the feed dogs that are moving the lowest layer of the quilt
Stitch in the Ditch - A method of quilting, where you align your stitches on the quilt to be in the seams (i.e. ditch) of your pieced blocks on the front of your quilt.
Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) - A method of quilting where your needle can move freely in all directions. You achieve this by using a darning foot (also known as a free motion foot) like a ruler foot. It allows a lot of freedom in the type of design you can create when quilting together all the layers. You will notice that there seems to be a sharp division in the quilting community on whether or not you should lower your feed dogs for FMQ. I haven’t tried to FMQ yet, so I can’t really give a personal opinion on this. Although based on what I’ve read I’ll probably leave my feed dogs up anytime I want to do a design with straight lines. For designs with circles or a more free hand style, I’ll have to try it both ways and see which I prefer.
Ruler Foot - a type of darning foot that can be used in Free Motion Quilting. It is a popular foot to use because you can use it with quilting rulers, and I don’t mean the rulers you use to cut fabric with, but rulers like this.
Long Arm Quilter / Long Arm Quilting - The first time I came across the term Long Arm Quilting, it was in Wendy Chow’s Urban Quilting book. Long Arm Quilting is where a long arm sewing machine is used to quilt together your fabric layers. It’s called long arm because, well, the machines have a really long arm. There are different types of long arm sewing machines, but a lot of the machines I see online, in a professional context, are machines where the quilt is laying on a frame and the machine (not the quilt) is moved on a track to sew the quilt together. I was initially a bit interested in a long arm machine but a quick google search made it obvious how expensive these machines are, and why we don’t see them a lot outside of a professional context. A Long Arm Quilter, as you can probably tell by the name, is someone who uses a long arm machine to sew together quilts. If you don’t want to quilt together the layers of your quilt yourself (either because you don’t have the time, or you are looking for a specific design), you can actually pay a long arm quilter to do it for you. If you want to see some examples of the work they do, just head over to instagram.
Binding tape - Used to finish the edge of your quilt, they are sewn together strips of fabric made from fabric cut lengthwise, crosswise, or on the bias. Binding tape cut on the bias, is also known as bias tape. Now, there are different reasons why you might cut your fabric for binding tape in those specific directions, but I’m not going to get into that now. I would recommend checking out Village Bound’s blog post on it. You can make bias tape yourself, or buy it from a store. It can come in different widths, and can be single fold or double fold. Binding tape is also used outside of quilting.
Yard / Fat Quarter / Fat Eighth - These terms are describing different lengths and sizes of fabric. A yard is 36”x44”, a half yard is 18”×44", a fat quarter is 18”×22" (i.e. a cross cut of a half yard), and a fat eighth is 9×22". Now, to be clear, while a fat quarter is the same amount of fabric as a 1/4th yard of fabric, they are different shapes. Same with fat eighths vs 1/8th yard. I.e. when you are talking in terms of yards, the width of your fabric is almost always going to be 44” wide, but fat quarters and fat eighths are going to be half of that, i.e. 22”. I should warn you that outside of the US, you may run into fabric being measured in meters, rather than in yards. Now a meter and a yard are actually close in length, but it is something to be mindful of based the your pattern you are following and where you are buying your fabric.
Selvage - An edge of the fabric that is tightly woven to keep the fabric from unraveling while being stored. I only mention this because when you order fabric, you might get fabric with a selvage and you are going to want to cut that edge off before you use it.
In summary, while this isn’t a full list of quilting terminology, I hope it helps those of you who are new to the field. I would recommend if you are interested in techniques on how to sew your quilt layers together, to order books specifically on that topic. This is because a lot of the quilting books out there are more focused on providing quilt patterns, and don’t actually cover much of the process of sewing together all the layers of your quilt. They are still great books, they just aren’t going to be focused on that topic. I would suggest picking up Jacquie Gering’s Walk if you are looking for a book. I really like how she has laid out her book, and that all of her designs can be created with a walking foot. For FMQ, I don’t know if I have a book yet that I would strongly recommend. I’m currently reading Ashley Nickel’s Free-Motion Quilting 101 book, but she doesn’t talk about how to use ruler foots with quilting rulers.
For those of you looking for more specific 15-91 information in regards to quilting, don’t worry, I’ve ordered a walking foot and a ruler foot for my 15-91. When those come in, I will write more 15-91 focused posts. And yes, if you want to lower your feed dogs on your 15-91, there is a way to do that, I just haven’t had to yet, so I haven’t written about it.