Tips on beginning quilting:

(This is for Christa, who emailed me - by way of a response to a comment I left on her blog - with some questions)

(This is all very much IMHO and is based on my own experience. Other quilters, feel free to add or contradict in the comments.)

The main key to piecing a quilt well is to maintain a constant seam allowance and to cut carefully. Most quilts have seam allowances of 1/4", and you can buy sewing machine feet that will measure that off. (I highly recommend getting one if you plan to do much quilting - either the "Little Foot" [which I will admit has some problems, one of them being it doesn't always mesh well with the feed dogs] or a quilting foot specifically for your machine, if the manufacturer makes one).

As for cutting: you can make plastic (or heavy cardboard) templates and trace them with a pencil or chalk and cut them out. (Be warned that you may need to periodically check the heavy cardboard templates for wear - they tend to "shrink" over time). I find that very time-consuming though, and it hurts my hand to use my scissors for too long.

These days, I'm much more prone to use a rotary cutter (that's what the wheelie thing is called). To use it, though, you need some other gear: a mat and also a very heavy plastic ruler (Often you can buy the three as a package deal - mat, ruler, and cutter - at quilt shops). Olfa is one company that makes them. (I will warn you though - if you're at all chemically sensitive, let the Olfa mat sit out in the sun for a day or so before bringing it into your house. They have HORRIBLE plastic outgassing smells and my mat actually made me kind of sick until I did the out-in-the-sun trick).

(Another little warning: rotary cutters are crazy sharp. Most of them come with a "safety" that you're supposed to leave on when you're not using it. If you have kids, definitely keep it somewhere where they can't find it. They also make what are like chainmail gloves to wear while you cut if you're afraid of cutting your hand. I don't wear the gloves. I've never cut myself seriously but I have nicked my hand sometimes and because it's basically a razor edge, cuts from it bleed like a mother.)

The most useful ruler is a 6 1/2" wide, 24" long ruler that is marked in increments of 1/4" (or 1/8", if you can find it, is even better). If you only get one ruler get that one.

It's also nice to have a big square ruler - like a 12" square. These are also marked off in increments and they are very nice to have if you want to "square up" your blocks after sewing them.

There are lots of other things out there - Tri-Recs, and "Magic Angles" and 30* angle tools, and stuff like that. I have a few bits and bobs of these (mostly bought crazy cheap when JoAnn's was having a good sale), but I rarely use them. The 6 1/2" wide ruler really is the most useful. (You can also buy, as needed, plexiglass templates for charm quilts - like, I bought the tumbler template and that worked pretty well. Or, if you have someone in your life with a table saw that will cut plexiglas, they can MAKE templates for you, which would be nice).

The main thing on the sewing: it is not hard. Just cut carefully and maintain the steady seam allowance. Oh, and be sure to press your seams. The typical thing to do is to press to the darker fabric OR press the seams so that the seam allowances are "staggered" (that is, one row they will point left and the next row they will point right. That allows for more accurate matching).

Pinning is important if you're sewing longer strips together. I often don't pin if the pieces I'm sewing are less than 6" along the seamline, but I do pin when I'm sewing rows of blocks together or if I have to be sure to get the seams matched up.

Some books I'd recommend for beginner quilters:

Fons and Porter's "Quilter's Complete Guide" This has pretty much all the how-do-I-do-it stuff, like how to make a bias binding and how to cut pieces.

Fat Quarter Quilts by M'Liss Rae Hawley (she also has two other fat-quarter books). These are good, fairly straighforward patterns, for making quilts out of fat quarters. One thing I like about these books is that each quilt is made in several different colors so you can see the effect of different "moods."

Most of the Rodale Press books (or Oxmoor House, when they're in paperback), like Relax and Quilt have some basic instructions in the back.

For inspiration:

The Modern Quilt Workshop. I LOVE this book. The patterns in it are mostly rectilinear and the style of the patterns and quilts is very clean - sort of modern and yet also sort of vintage. This is the book I got the "Zipper" quilt pattern out of. There are a bunch of things I'd like to make out of this book.

Kaffe Fassett quilt books (This one is just an example). Fassett is a genius at using color, and he uses prints in a way that a lot of people might not think of.

There are also a lot of magazines out there, many of which have good "introductory" patterns. My favorites are the ones put out by McCall's, and Better Homes and Gardens, and also "Quilter's Newsletter Magazine," which is probably the longest-running quilt magazine out there. (They tend to have fewer patterns and more "this is what is going on in the Quilt World," but they do sometimes have really good "technique" articles. The other two magazines are more project-oriented).

As for QUILTING the quilt - these days I take most of mine to someone with a long arm machine and pay her to machine quilt them for me. But I also like handquilting and usually have something in the frame to slowly work on (or not work on, as it seems to be, lately). The best book for learning hand quilting that I've seen is Ami Simms' "Improve your quilting stitch".

So, I hope that helped. And I hope I didn't insult you by being "too basic" - I never know how much people already know about a topic.