Fabric of Appalachia: Finishing Your Quilt

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Welcome to Fabric of Appalachia where American history is stitched together one quilt block at a time. Sewing along with us? We’d love to see your finished blocks in the comments. This week we are sharing directions for finishing your quilt and celebrating the ways in which Appalachian people worked together.

In these mountains, where communities were often separated by rugged terrain and hired labor was scarce, cooperation was a way of life. Mountain residents were resourceful and independent, but some tasks were impossible for a family to accomplish on their own or were at least easier to accomplish when the work was shared with others. Neighbors came together to clear land, harvest and thresh crops, raise barns, build homes, and process food, transforming demanding work into shared effort. Quilting followed the same tradition: women hosted quilting bees that turned a task that could take months to accomplish into a single productive day, strengthened by community.

These community work gatherings were essential, but they were also deeply social. Friends and neighbors talked as they worked, discussing the daily news, sharing recipes and farming tips, offering advice on how to accomplish a task, and perhaps indulging in a bit of gossip that made a long workday feel just a little shorter. A hostess might prepare food, or families might bring dishes to share, and when the work was finished everyone enjoyed a communal meal, followed by an evening of socializing.

Children took advantage of having plenty of playmates, and young people often used these gatherings as a chance to court. Storytellers shared familiar tales or spooky stories, and someone might pull out a fiddle or a dulcimer and start to play a tune. These gatherings created opportunities for strangers to become acquaintances, acquaintances to become friends, and friends to mend misunderstandings—helping to build the tight‑knit, resilient communities that Appalachia is known for.

Still want to learn more? Consider exploring some of the other National Park Service sites in Appalachia: Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah National Park, New River Gorge National Park & Preserve, Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

 

Layout before sewing your quilt.

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Finishing Your Quilt Instructions

Now that all of the blocks are stitched, it’s time to finish your quilt. This includes assembling the top, sandwiching the layers, quilting, and binding your quilt. We’ll give you the steps all at once, but this set of directions is unlikely to be completed in a week. Take your time!

Design Notes

We’ll start by assembling the quilt top. You’ve pieced blocks in three sizes—4-inch star blocks, 6-inch star blocks, and 12-inch blocks for all the other patterns. Blocks of the same size can be swapped anywhere in the layout, so you don’t need to match the exact placement shown in our sample quilt. In fact, your color choices will influence how each block feels, and you’ll probably want to experiment with different arrangements until you find the layout that looks best to you.

It can be helpful to lay out all the pieces of your quilt top—either on a flat surface or by hanging them on a design wall or flannel sheet. Trying out different arrangements and snapping a quick photo with your phone can make it easier to compare layouts and decide which one you like best.

Cutting and Marking

Cutting

Some of the strips you will be cutting are long. If your fabric is not long enough to make them out of a single piece, it’s fine to cut two pieces and sew them together to get the full length, just be sure to add ¼” seam allowance to each piece to account for the seam needed to connect them.

Color 1 (narrow sashing against blocks):

• cut nine 2 ½” X 12 ½” strips

• cut four 2 ½” X 46 ½” strips

• cut two 2 ½” X 44 ½” strips

Color 2 (wide outer border):

• cut two 6 ½” X 44 ½” strips

• cut two 6 ½” X 50 ½” strips

Marking

If you are hand piecing, add a ¼” seam allowance to each of the strips

Assembly/Piecing

Piecing the top together looks complicated, but really, you will stitch it the same way that you did the blocks, just on a larger scale. The key to success is measuring carefully, pinning accurately, using enough pins to keep your fabric from shifting (as a general rule of thumb, you probably want to pin every 3-4” along a strip), and taking your time to stitch accurately.

Step 1: Lay out all of your pieces and move blocks around until you are happy with their placement. Once you have everything where you want it, pin and stitch the 4” star blocks together in rows of three and press the seams, then stitch the short 12.5” sashing strips between blocks to form three columns. Press seam allowances towards the sashing strips.

Step 2: Pin and stitch the vertical sashing strips between the pieced columns of blocks. Then, pin and stitch the narrow vertical border strips to either side of the center unit. Press seam allowances towards the sashing/border strips.

It’s helpful when adding long strips like this to add marks along the sashing/border at distances equal to the distances between seams on the pieced column. Then, pin one section at a time, making sure that the fabrics lay together smoothly without puckers or bubbles of excess fabric. Be sure to add plenty of pins to hold everything in place; the longer the space between pins, the more likely your fabrics will shift or you’ll get a pucker.

Step 3: Pin and stitch the narrow horizontal borders to the wide horizontal borders. Press towards the wide borders.

 

Step 1 completed.

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Step 2 completed.

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Step 3 completed.

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Step 4: Pin and stitch the pieced, horizontal border units to the top and bottom of the center unit. Press towards the border unit.

Step 5: Pin and stitch one 6” star block to each end of the wide vertical border strips. Press towards the border strip.

Step 6: Pin and stitch the pieced vertical border units to the sides of the center unit. Press towards the center unit.

The finished top is 56.5” x 62.5”

Next, we are going to sandwich, quilt, and bind the quilt. While we’ll provide a brief overview of the steps below, watch this video for instructions on how to complete these steps.

 

Step 4 completed.

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Step 5 completed.

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Step 6 completed.

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Step-by-step

Sandwiching Quilt

To assemble the layers of the quilt, you will need your finished quilt top, backing fabric, and batting.

Step 1: The finished quilt top is 56 ½” X 62 ½”. You will want your backing fabric to extend beyond this at least 4” in each direction, so cut your backing fabric at least 65” X 70”.

You can purchase extra wide backing fabric or, if you use regular width fabric, you will need to cut two 65” lengths of fabric (or 70” if your fabric has a pattern that has a specific top and bottom) and piece them side by side to get a large enough piece.

Step 2: Lay the backing fabric, wrong-side up on a flat surface (either the floor or a large table), making sure that it is wrinkle free. You can tape this down to help hold it in place if you like.

Step 3: Place a similarly sized piece of quilt batting on top, smoothing it to eliminate wrinkles. If your batting has a lot of wrinkles, you can put it in the dryer with a damp cloth for a few minutes to help get them out.

Step 4: Place your quilt top, right-side up on top of the quilt batting, making sure that it is also laying smoothly.

Step 5: Starting at the center, pin with safety pins moving outward in all directions until the entire sandwich is pinned. You can leave the safety pins open until they are all in place. When all the pins are in, lift the sandwich and look at the back to be sure you haven’t accidentally created puckers. Adjust the pins as needed until the layers are smooth, then close all safety pins.

Quilting

Now, we add texture by quilting the quilt (the video linked above has instructions on how to do this).

Before you start stitching, think about how you want your quilt to look. You could outline the pieces of the quilt (called stitching in the ditch), echo the seam lines, add an all over design like a grid or a meandering pattern, or choose specific motifs to stitch into your quilt. We can’t cover all the possibilities for quilting, so we recommend doing a web search or checking your local library for information about quilting designs.

Binding

The last step is binding the edge of the quilt. You will need a binding strip that is 2 ¼” wide and long enough to go fully around the edge of the quilt, with tails that will allow you to close the ends once you’ve stitched it all the way around.

Step 1: We recommend cutting a binding strip that is 2 ¼” wide and at least 254” long. You will have to cut multiple strips and piece them together to get this length. The video demonstrates how to do that.

Step 2: Once your binding strip is assembled, press each of the seams open to distribute the bulk. Then fold the strip in half along its length, pressing well to set the fold.

Step 3: Square up the edges of the quilt, trimming off the excess backing and binding to make a tidy edge.

Step 4: Pin your binding strip to the back of the quilt sandwich, lining up the cut edges of the binding with the edge of the quilt sandwich. Stitch this in place, leaving an 8” tail unstitched at the beginning. As you are stitching it down, turn the corners as demonstrated in the video. When you have made it almost all the way around, stop leaving about a 10” gap between where you started stitching and where you stop stitching.

You can do this by hand, but this is one step that we’d recommend doing on a sewing machine if you have access to one.

Step 5: To close the gap in the binding, cut one tail at a 45-degree angle, making its length reach approximately to the middle of the gap between where you started and stopped sewing.

Now, take the uncut tail and lay it inside the tail you just cut, smoothing both so that they go across the gap without bulging or puckering. You will be using the cut tail to help determine where to cut the second tail.

Mark a line where the already cut tail ends on the uncut tail. This line is just to help you place the cutting line. You want the uncut tail to end up ½” longer than necessary to reach this line, which will give enough seam allowance to stitch the ends together and have the correct length of binding to cover the stitching gap. Mark a cutting line on the uncut tail ½” past the line you just drew.

Step 6: Stitch the ends of the tails together as you did when you connected strips to make the binding and press to open the seam allowance and to set the fold.

Step 7: Finish stitching down the binding to cover the gap

Step 8: Turn the binding and hand stitch it down on the front of the quilt to make a clean edge.