Free Online Quilting Course for Beginners

This is a free quilting course for beginners, and there is nothing to sign up for. It is eight lessons, in order, and the finished object at the end is a real quilt: a 36-by-48-inch patchwork lap throw with batting inside and a bound edge. Every lesson points at a page that already exists on this site, so you read one thing, make one thing, and move on.

If you want the background first, what a quilt sandwich is and why your regular machine is enough, read the beginner quilting guide. That page explains quilting. This page is the order to learn it in.

The course at a glance

Already sew? Skip to Lesson 2 and run the strip test. If it passes, go straight to Lesson 3.

What you need for the course

You need a sewing machine that sews a straight stitch, and the cutting trio. Everything else is fabric. The table at the top of this page is our researched pick in each category; below is why each one is on the list.

Fiskars 45mm Rotary Cutter

The standard 45mm blade, which is the all-rounder size for quilting cotton. The one rule worth repeating from the rotary cutter guide: close the blade every single time you put it down.

The mat and the ruler

The cutting mat and ruler are the two pieces beginners under-buy. Our pick for the mat is the Idemeet 24-by-36-inch, because it takes a full folded width of fabric; if your table is small, a 12-by-18-inch mat will cut fat quarters, which is all this course uses. For the ruler, the MANUFORE 6-by-24-inch is the one long ruler we would buy first, and the quilting guide's ruler table compares it with the alternatives.

Fairfield QB4512 batting

Fairfield's listing gives this crib-size batting as 45 by 60 inches, about an eighth of an inch of loft, and a quilting distance of 2 to 4 inches. The size covers the lap throw's batting piece with room to spare, and the low loft is the easiest kind to feed through a home machine. The quilting distance is the number to obey in Lesson 7.

The walking foot

Our pick is the Fyroxx open-toe walking foot, and its listing is specific about fit: it is made for 7mm low-shank machines such as Brother, and not for high-shank, slant-shank, older or industrial machines. Check your machine's shank before you buy any walking foot. If your machine already came with one, as some quilting machines do, skip this.

Brother CS7000X, only if you need a machine

You do not need a quilting machine for a lap throw; any machine that sews a straight stitch will do. If you have no machine at all and you know you want to quilt, the Brother CS7000X is our pick on the quilting machines shelf, because the listing includes a walking foot, a quarter-inch foot and a wide table in the box, which is most of this list already.

Gear mentioned above

What we'd buy for this

One pick per category, chosen from the research pages linked in this piece. Borrow before you buy — nothing here is required to start.

• 
  Rotary Cutters

  Fiskars 45mm$10.98★ 4.6 out of 5 stars · 2,112 ratings

  Priced in the lower half of this category.

  Why this oneBuy on Amazon
• 
  Cutting Mats

  anezus 12inch$8.99★ 4.6 out of 5 stars · 21,006 ratings

  The least expensive pick in this category, which makes it the low-risk way to find out whether you'll keep at it; the surface is self-healing, so rotary cuts close up instead of scarring into a groove that steers your next cut.

  Why this oneBuy on Amazon
• 
  Quilting Rulers

  LINXIAO$9.99★ 4.8 out of 5 stars · 1,141 ratings

  Why this oneBuy on Amazon

Researched from listings, specs and owner feedback — never hands-on testing. We may earn a commission; it never changes a pick.

Lesson 1: Get the machine running

Nothing in quilting is hard if the machine is threaded properly, and almost everything goes wrong if it is not. Work through how to thread a sewing machine and how to wind a bobbin, then sew a few lines on a folded scrap. If you see loops underneath, it is almost always a threading problem rather than the machine, and the tension guide walks through the checks in order.

If you have never sewn anything at all, make a set of cloth napkins first. Four straight hems are the best practice there is for the long straight seams a quilt is made of.

Lesson 2: The quarter-inch seam

Quilting uses a quarter-inch seam allowance everywhere, and the whole quilt depends on it being the same quarter inch every time. A seam that is a thread too wide on every join adds up across a row of six squares, and the rows stop matching.

Find your quarter inch first. Some machines come with a quarter-inch foot; otherwise, measure a quarter inch to the right of the needle and stick a strip of masking tape on the bed as a guide.

Then run the strip test:

1. Cut three strips of cotton, each exactly 2.5 inches wide and a few inches long.
2. Sew them together side by side with your quarter-inch seam.
3. Press the seams to one side.
4. Measure across the middle. It should be exactly 6.5 inches.

Three strips of 2.5 inches lose half an inch at each of the two seams, so 6.5 inches is the right answer. If you get 6.25, your seam is too wide; move the tape guide a hair to the right and try again. This ten-minute test saves more first quilts than any tool.

Press, do not iron: lift the iron and set it down, rather than sliding it, so the seams do not stretch. You will press after every single seam in this course. An iron you already own is fine.

Lesson 3: The cutting trio

Read rotary cutter vs scissors before you cut anything. It explains why the cutter, the mat and the ruler only work as a set, and the safety rules that matter.

Then practise on fabric you do not care about. Fold it selvedge to selvedge, square up one edge with the ruler, and cut five strips. Stand up to cut, keep your fingers on the ruler away from its edge, and always cut away from yourself. When five strips in a row come out the same width, you are ready.

Lesson 4: Choose a size and buy fabric

This course makes the 36-by-48-inch quilted lap throw, and we suggest you do too. It is big enough to be useful and small enough to fit through a home machine without a fight. If you want something different, the quilt sizes chart gives every standard size with the batting and backing each one needs, and the quilt backing calculator works out the backing yardage for any size.

For the lap throw you need a bundle of ten fat quarters, about 1.75 yards of backing fabric, half a yard for binding and crib-size batting. The full table is in the project. Whether to wash the fabric first is a real question with a real answer, and should you prewash fabric has it, including the separate rules for precuts.

Lesson 5: Cut and piece the top

Follow the cut list and the piecing steps in the quilted lap throw: 48 squares at 6.5 inches, laid out six across and eight down, sewn into rows and then the rows into a top.

Two habits make the difference here:

• Lay out the whole quilt before you sew. Take a photo, then sew one row at a time and put it back in its place.
• Press each row's seams in the opposite direction to the row above. When two rows meet, the seams then lock against each other and the corners line up almost by themselves. The beginner quilting guide calls this nesting, and it is the single trick behind corners that meet.

Lesson 6: Make the quilt sandwich

The sandwich is the backing face down, the batting in the middle, and the top face up, with the backing and batting a few inches bigger than the top on every side. Tape the backing flat and taut on a floor or a large table, smooth the batting over it, lay the top on, and pin through all three layers with curved safety pins every few inches.

Take your time. Any wrinkle you leave in the backing now becomes a permanent pleat in Lesson 7. The basting section of the beginner quilting guide covers pin basting and spray basting.

Lesson 7: Quilt straight lines

Fit the walking foot and a fresh needle, lengthen the stitch a little, and sew straight lines through all three layers. The easiest pattern is stitching in the ditch, right along the seams between your squares, or a line corner to corner through each square.

Start in the middle and work outwards, and alternate the direction of each line so the layers do not creep one way. Keep your lines no further apart than the maximum quilting distance printed on your batting packet; for the Fairfield batting above, that is 4 inches, so add a line through the middle of each square as well as the seams.

Lines that do not follow a seam are easier to sew straight if you draw them first, with the ruler and a washable marking pen. Our pick is the Dritz 673-60 dual-purpose pen, which Dritz lists for quilting designs; it says the blue marks wipe away with a damp cloth. Test it on a scrap of your fabric before you mark the quilt.

If it helps to watch it first, the quilting videos on our watch page are grouped under Level 3, including a low-stress method for quilting a finished top on a home machine.

Lesson 8: Bind the edge

Binding is the narrow strip of fabric that wraps the raw edge and frames the quilt. Follow the binding steps in the lap throw project: join strips at 45 degrees, press them in half, sew them to the front, mitre the corners, then fold to the back and hand-stitch with a slip stitch. If the slip stitch is new, it is the same invisible stitch taught in basic hand-sewing stitches.

Then wash it. The crinkle that appears is the quilt looking finished, not a mistake.

After the course

Your first quilt will have points that do not quite meet. Everyone's did. From here, the usual next steps are a bigger quilt from the sizes chart, half-square triangles for a new block, and, if the rolled-up bulk of a bigger quilt starts fighting your machine, a look at what extra throat space buys on the quilting machines shelf.

The rest of the free curriculum is on the course hub. Quilting sits at Level 3, The Maker, alongside the first garments.