A thick, heavy quilt, designed to provide warmth. A general term for a bedspread, that is, a textile intended to serve as the visible top layer when a bed is made up with several layers of bedcovers. A variant term for counterpane. A patchwork technique in which irregularly shaped pieces of fabric are attached to a cloth foundation. Crazy quilts may be decorated with embroidered designs.
Factories sometimes sell cutaways to quiltmakers, often by mail order.
A term sometimes used for unbleached muslin, dating from the nineteenth century when printed fabrics were generally imported and plain fabrics were generally manufactured domestically. The process of drawing a quilt design, often from a picture or an existing quilt, rather than using ready-made templates or patterns. A quilting design of repeated concentric arcs that forms an all-over stitching design usually unrelated to the design of the quilt top. Popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fan quilting is considered by some observers to be old-fashioned and undesirable in contemporary quiltmaking. A relative term for the process of making quilts in which the decorative function is paramount.