Welcome to The Woodloft's newest section.  We are now one of the largest showrooms of locally made quilts in Arthur, Illinois. We carry both handmade and machine-made quilts.

Most handmade quilts, that are for sale today, are not of good quality. In part, this is because the demand for quilts is far greater than what can be met by the lessening number of experienced quilt-makers. Also, it is because many people will pay just as much for a quilt that is poorly designed and sewn as they will for one that is well designed and finely sewn. Surprisingly, it's not hard to recognize a good quality handmade quilt. Most people just don't have any idea of what to look for.

It is difficult to design a quilt. The choice of patterns, fabrics, and proportions is daunting, and a quilt can be ruined by the inclusion of a fabric in the design with just slightly the wrong color. Many quilt-makers are far better at sewing than they are at designing. Consequently, look carefully at how the fabrics in the quilt play off against each other. If it doesn't look good to you, it isn't good!

It has got to be enticing to a quilt-maker to scale back on the density of the quilting pattern. The hand sewing of a pattern is by far the biggest cost of making a handmade quilt, whatever can be done to cut back on the sewing will reduce the cost (but not necessarily the price!) of a quilt. The purpose of the quilting stitches is to hold the batting material and two outer fabric layers together. On average, within each square foot of a good quilt there should be at least 90 linear inches of quilt stitching (if a crosshatch pattern was used for the quilt stitching, the crosshatch squares should be no more than 3 inches on a side). Where one quilting patterns stops and another starts, the designer occasionally leaves small areas without any quilting stitching. In a good quilt, there will be only minimal areas where there are gaps in quilting larger than a fist. Before you buy a quilt, look at the back of it (where the quilting pattern is most apparent) and verify that you are getting your money's worth.

The quilting stitches in a well made quilt will be the same size and evenly spaced (about 6 to 8 stitches per inch). A good quilt will have over 50,000 stitches, so some quilt-makers feel an economic incentive to make larger (and consequently fewer) stitches. Uneven stitching is the mark of an inexperienced or sloppy quilt-maker. Again, the quality of the stitching is usually best seen on the back of the quilt. All of our handmade quilts meet these standards.

Please feel free to contact us at: custserv@woodloft.com with any questions or, better yet, stop by our showroom located in The Woodloft, here in downtown Arthur, IL