Once you have created a couple or 10 quilts you might want to consider selling them. You can give them away to friends and family members and you can even sell them for FUN AND PROFIT. After all, you will need to recoup all that money and time you spent creating your fabulous creations and what better way than to sell a few. Of course, the more inventory you can create before you decide to sell the better. And the more the make the faster you will get at making them. There are various avenues for selling your quilts and Spring and Fall are probably the better times to try and sell them. You can pay the fees for a booth at a local quilting show or even pay the smaller fees at your local Flea and Farmers Market. But if you don’t want to schlep all your inventory to any of these places you can create a website.

If you go the traditional route you will have to pay for a domain, pay for website hosting fees and setup a shopping cart. And absolutely set up a PAYPAL account. PAYPAL is a secure credit card/electronic check processing website that keeps yours and your customers information safe and secure. Check out the GODADDY website for an inexpensive website solution that will give you complete control of how you website looks like, feels like and interacts. If you are not internet or web savvy then you can even try two websites that we use in conjunction with our own Jolene’s Books and More by going to Yardsellr and or ETSY.

Yardsellr is a FREE Listing website that you can upload pictures of your items, write a description, and have all your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Pinrest to view your listings and share them with their friends and family. There are no fees to the sellers but a small fee is added to each buyer. It is highly recommended that you have your PAYPAL account already set up before joining so you can get PAID. They also require that you get a tracking number after shipping. They have a Help section for you to read through to find out all the rules and how to’s on setting up your account and other things that you need to know. You will have to relist each item every 30 days but they don’t charge for that either.

Now, ETSY is another seller/buyer website that gives you a little more leeway in your shop. They do charge $0.20 per item that you list and a small percentage of the amount you sell. They help you get the word out and offer videos and instructions on how to list, take pictures, involve your friends, even pay a small fee to have your items featured quickly. You have to renew your items every 4 months and pay the $0.20 per item fee again. The fees are due by the 15th of the following month. That gives you a little time to list your items and hopefully make a sale or two before they are due. Read through the help sections of any site or service you decide to use. So far we have been happy with all the services we are recommending.

As beginners we are searching for fast and free information on how to quilt, patterns in quilting and anything else we can use to help us in our new hobby. There are websites about beginning quilting, quilting museums, quilting guilds, quilting magazines, shops that specializes in quilts and selling quilting materials, and quilt festivals.

http://www.quilting-beginner.com/ Quilting Beginner

http://www.quiltingassistant.com/ Quilting Assistant

http://www.pamsquiltedmemories.com/index.htm Pam’s Quilted Memories

http://www.keepsakequilting.com/default.aspx Keepsake Quilting

http://www.quilterswarehouse.com/ Quilters Warehouse

http://www.quilterswarehouse.com/ McCalls Quilting

http://www.thequiltermag.com/ The Quilter Mag

http://www.quiltpatternmagazine.com/ Quilt Pattern Magazine

http://www.quiltershomemag.com/index.html Quilters Home Magazine

http://www.quiltersnewsletter.com/index.html Quilters Newsletter

http://www.quiltingboard.com/ Quilting Board and Forum

http://www.quiltfestjax.com/ Quilt Festival in Jacksonville, Florida

http://www.quiltuniversity.com/ take Classes on Quilting

http://www.electricquilt.com/ Electric Quilt

http://www.equilter.com/ eQuilter

http://mqumag.com/ Machine Quilting

We hope you will find some of these websites helpful in your quest for learning how to quilt.

If you have ever thought about what your ideal quilt would look like and feel like then this is a good post for you. You have researched the various patterns by viewing the previous post, you have been looking at material at the fabric shops and you are just about ready to start putting together your very first quilt or even your 100th. Reviewing your choices in materials is always a pleasant way to spend a few hours or a couple of minutes a few times a week. Planning out a quilt can be fun. Look around your house, look through your closets and see if you can find some old material, some clothes that are no longer being used, some used sheets or old blankets that you can recycle into a quilt. You can pick out your most favorite types of cloth or sets of colors you would like to use. You can decide on the scheme or pattern later.

I prefer cotton, satin, suede and velvet materials because they are soft. The feel of the material is just as important as the colors. When making a pattern the type of material can create a 3-D effect with very little effort. And using things around your house is considered “Green”. Quilts have been made from clothing and other items found around the house for ages. Of course, you want to make sure that the items are reuseable and do not have stains or smell bad. Just stating the obvious. You can even use scrap material from previous projects. Once you have found the cloth you want to use all you have to do is cut them into squares as big as you can. Even triangle cuts are good for some patterns. Solid or prints whatever you find can be used. Once you have these you can begin to plan your pattern or theme!

Quilting is and has in the past been considered an artistic endeavor. There has been quilting throughout history. It can be a great pastime, a way to make money or something that you can pass down to your children and grandchildren. Quilting should be fun and an expression of your own creative process. Quilts can be just interesting designs, tell a story or memorialize an event. Most of all you and anyone you involve in your quilting project should enjoy the process. Below you will find links to various quilting museums where you can view examples of quilts to get you started. We have copied some of them for you to preview in our slideshow:

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U.S. Quilting Museum Links:
http://www.quiltmuseum.org/ – National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY
http://nequiltmuseum.org/home.html – Northeast Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA
http://www.laconnerquilts.com/ – La Conner Quilt Museum in La Conner, WA
http://www.sjquiltmuseum.org/ – San Jose Quilt Museum in San Jose, CA
https://rmqm.org/zz/ – Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, CO
http://www.vaquiltmuseum.org/ – The Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisburg, VA
http://wiquiltmuseum.com/ – Wisconsin Quilt Museum in Cedarburg, WI
http://whitebluffscenter.org/default.aspx – White Bluffs Quilt Museum in West Richland, WA
http://www.texasquiltmuseum.org/txqm2/home.html – Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, TX
http://www.quiltvisions.org/ – Visions Art Museum in San Diego, CA
http://museum.msu.edu/glqc/ – Great Lakes Quilt Museum in East Lansing, MI

http://www.onlinequiltmuseum.com/ – Online Quilt Museum in Litchfield, CT
http://www.quiltstudy.org/ – International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, NE

International Links:
http://www.quiltmuseum.org.uk/ York Quilting Museum in York, England
http://www.e-q-a.eu/ European Quilt Association Information about Quilting and Quilting Guilds in Europe
http://www.collectionsaustralia.net/nqr/about.php National Quilters Registry Australia

The history of quilting goes back to ancient Egypt. One of the earliest existing decorative works is the “Tristan quilt”, made around 1360. Made in Sicily, and as one of the earliest surviving quilts in the world, at least two sections survive at the V&A Museum and in Bargello, Florence. Russia holds the oldest example in existence. It is a quilted linen carpet found in a Mongolian cave, and now kept at the Saint Petersburg department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Archaeology Section. During the civil war both the north and the south’s families were making quilts to fit on small cots to keep their respective soldiers warm. Again, during the Great Depression, families were making quilts out of used clothing to keep warm. Quilts are just three layers of cloth with the top piece a decorative design. Most were handed down by family members and are considered heirlooms. During the last several hundreds of years quilts were mostly made for the rich with expensive cloth in elaborate designs or even pictures of scenes from history. Like the cave paintings of old most of these quilts tell our history and should be preserved. This is a time-honored craft that everyone can and should do at least once.

References:
http://www.theartfulcrafter.com/quilting-two.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quilting

You can find a variety of free resources on the web about quilting including a beginners course on Free Motion Quilting. I was cruising through youtube.com the other day and came across this series of videos on Free Motion Quilting for the Beginner. It is a great video series that explains how to do free motion quilts using a regular sewing machine. Take a look and see what you think:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

We hope you enjoyed these Free Motion Quilting Lessons and put them to good use by creating your own Free Motion Quilt using a Regular Sewing Machine….

Once you have created some quilts you may want to starting selling them. There are a variety of different ways to do this including going to arts and craft festivals in your city, flea markets on even setting up your website. You will need to have a good stock built up and that will take some time. You can look on the internet for the local arts and crafts festival, their cost, times and locations. The local flea market is a good place to set up a booth but then again you will need to contact the local vendors to find out their costs for a booth, times they are open and any special requirements they may have for bringing in your own tables and such. You want to have a way to display your quilts such as a rack as well as some bags to put them in, and change for cash payers. And you will probably need a way to take credit cards as well. I found a great website that talks about this subject at: http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/how-accept-credit-cards-garage-sale-1273.php

If you don’t want to attend arts and crafts festivals or hang out a the flea market all weekend you might want to consider getting a website and selling your products online. You create your own website using one of the free services such as: http://www.ecrater.com/ is a free ecommerce website and community with unlimited products you can add, or http://www.freewebstore.org/ is a free ecommerce webstore builder that is based out of England and limits your products to 9 or less. Just remember you will need to sign up for a merchants account with either Google pay or Paypal to process credit cards. However, you will not get a website with your own domain name. ECrater will allow you to just use their shopping cart feature by using links from your own domain website. You can always start out with a free site and when you get going you can upgrade to your own domain with a shopping cart feature built in so that you can control all aspects of your business. Try http://websforyou.info and http://blogsforyou.info when you are ready. Remember you have to have a shipping cost module added to your cart as well as collect sales taxes. The rate of sales tax is determined by which state you live in.

Finally, you will need to consider how much you are going to charge for your quilting creations. There are a variety of different strategies to consider when you want to sell you items including the cost of materials, the time spent on the project and the size of the piece and of course, the uniqueness of it as well. You can check on out this article I found at: http://quiltingbusiness.com/quilt-pricing.htm..Good luck!

Quilting can be a great hobby to start. I found a 4 part series of Beginning Quilting Videos on You-tube that I thought you might like:

Part One


Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

After You have viewed all the videos you should have some idea as to what is involved in making your first quilt. Just remember that all you really need is some time and patience and a little bit of imagination to make your very own heirloom quilt. The first one is always the most difficult one but keep trying and in no time your will be a pro!

We stating in the post previously that we will be finding FREE information resources for those who would like to learn about quilting. The first one I found that seems to offer a free beginners course in short little lessons that will give you a starting point: http://www.sewaquilt.com/
I read through the material and it has some great beginners information. The free lesson does seem to stress the fabric choices mostly. But does have other links for more information as well.

The About.com website has lots and lots of information that people have contributed and they have a subdomain about quilting. http://quilting.about.com/ They break it down into easy to digest sections but not really all that printer friendly. The Rag Quilting Section is great for beginners. You use materials from your own home. Old clothes or clothes that you and you kids no longer wear are pretty good sources of materials. If you just throw away your clothes you are wasting a great source of material. Granted you really can’t use those that are all stained but generally old clothes make a very interesting quilt and hey, your are recycling!

Finally, there is the ehow site that has videos and articles about quilting as well. I have read through some of them and watched a couple of the videos and they are pretty good. Give it a try at: http://www.ehow.com/articles_2414-quilting.html

More later!

There are lots of information all over the internet for those who would like to learn how to quilt. We have even gathered hundreds of different books, videos, magazines and quilting supplies. Not only can you get quilting blocks of material, sewing machine stuff, thread, and much, much more. Check out our bookstore at: http://allaboutquiltingonline.info/wordpress/bookstore

Over the next several posts we will be gathering information from other websites and other quilters. If you are a quilter and would like to contribute to our little blog please email us with your subscribers id and we will be happy to change you to an author. jolene.macfadden@allaboutquiltingonline.info

Here is the first article I found about learning to quilt that I found kind of interesting:
http://quilting.about.com/od/stepbystepquilting/a/make_a_quilt.htm
Yes, you can learn how to quilt, get some quilting patterns and much more for free. The only thing you cannot do is get someone else to do the work for you. You will need to do the work or you are just not learning. A quilt is really a personal expression from you to the person you are giving the quilt to. I spent about 2 or 3 weeks creating a quilt for my first grandchild as a Christmas present. I just read the article printed off one of the patterns and went to Walmart to the remnants bin and picked some odds-and-ends. My granddaugther likes satiny material and I bought 2 colors about a quarter a yard a piece. Then picked out some bright cotton pieces. I also found some cotton batting and a dark solid colored flannel piece for the back piece. I had to go to Michael’s Craft shop for the satiny ribbon to use as a trim. All in all it came out very nice and has lasted through years of washing. The materials cost me about $15 and I spent a total of 16 hours cutting, piecing together, sewing and basting it together.