Friday Fun Fact: What makes a quilt a quilt?

We tend to associate quilting with sewing lots of small bits of fabric together in a pattern, but a quilt isn’t a quilt until it’s quilted.

Piecing fabrics together is a delightful part of quilting, and the possibilities are endless, but a finished quilt top isn't really a quilt - yet.

Quilting actually refers to the stitching done through all the layers. When you stack up the backing fabric, batting, and pieced top into a big fluffy sandwich, you're almost there! It's the step done to join all those layers into a unified whole that makes it a quilt. 

In fact, a quilt doesn't even have to have a pieced top to call it a quilt! Un-pieced whole-cloth quilts were immensely popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and many quilters still enjoy them today.