Quilting material kits

Quilts: A Keepsake for Your Generation

My mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother have all been quilters. Growing up I didn't appreciate the time the women in my family spent underneath a lamp studying the fine stitches they created one painstaking thread at a time. I didn't understand why they would spend months focusing on these intricate details only to find a safe place for it later where little hands, dust bunnies, and the sun couldn't reach it.

I am older now, and I finally appreciate the time it took them to make those quilts. Now I understand that dust, the sun, and my dirty hands would have ruined them. My grandmother and great-grandmother are gone, but I am grateful for those memories. They left behind beautiful quilts that I will someday give to my children and my grandchildren.

Mass production is now possible with advances in technology. The arts and crafts world, including quilting, has been significantly changed by mass production. Although this has increased the value of handmade quilts, it poses the question "why exactly are quilts from the days of yore better?"

When a quilter makes a quilt completely by hand, the pieces of fabric (usually squares) are chosen for artistic reasons or a similar purpose. Mass produced quilts are made with efficiency rather than with the long life of a quilt in mind. With handmade quilts, however, the design and fabric that hold the squares together are chosen so that the quilts will last lifetimes.

There are retailers and online vendors around that will create quilts for you cheap and fast. They may even allow you to choose where pieces of fabric will be placed on the quilt, the colors incorporated, and the design, but often times these types of quilts are rush jobs and look just like thousands of other quilts. If what you want is something long-lasting that clearly has been thought through with an artistic eye, then a custom hand made quilt is the better way to go.

If you choose a custom quilter, he or she will be able to guide you on what designs and colors will complement your theme and desired outcome. Fiber artists are putting their names on such quilts and therefore have as much interest as you in making the quilt turn out fantastic, something a mass-producer of quilts will not care about.

Although custom handmade quilts are more expensive and take longer to make than mass-produced quilts, this is the best option if you want a keepsake. You will get a beautiful quilt that will last so long that future generations will be able to hide this keepsake from the sun, dust bunnies, and the dirty hands of their children.

Author Sara Musfeldt has been a fan of fiber art for many years. In particular, Sara has found that t-shirt quilts are a great way to combine traditional quilting with modern life.