Really odd one- Displaying Quilts

Cafe Society
1

OK SD. I think this is the greatest online community there is. I’m putting y’all to the test.

Also, I am stupid when it comes to which forum to post in, so, whatever.

We are in posession of a number of family heirloom quilts. These are of no financial value, but across the whole of the family are quite revered. My mom was a quilting machine, and made beautiful quilts for me, my brothers, my nephews and nieces, etc. My wife and I have probably 10 or so. She would tailor each one to the person it was for. What colors they liked, what sort of things interested them, etc.

They vary in size, but aren’t generally huge. ranging from 3x3 to 5x5 feet.

We rarely use them as blankets because we want to keep them nice. Also, my 100 pound Giant Schnauzer does not respect them.

Anyway, we want to display them and admire them as wall hangings. I’m looking for suggestions as to how I can make some sort of hanging/display that would show them off. I have a few ideas, like a clip attached to the wall, but I’m just not inspired. I could “frame” them, perhaps, but I’d kind of like to be able to touch them… I don’t know, does any of this make sense?

So, I’m looking for ideas. If you had a bunch of quilts, not too large, how would you display them? I’m pretty handy, so building something is the plan, not something I fear.

Ideas?

2

I don’t know the name of them, but I routinely see quilts around here (often being displayed for sale) that are mounted on some kind of hanger clearly meant for the purpose.

So I tried just googling “quilt hangers” and got quite a lot of hits. Maybe start there, and see if anything seems to fit? If you want to build your own, that might still be a place to start, to get ideas.

3

If you’re not averse to attaching things to your walls, carpet tack strips work well for rugs and quilts. The tacks are sharp enough they should spread the fibers, not cut them. Super duper cheap, also.

4

There is a displayed quilt in the room I’m in right now. There are several others in the house, too. All of them are attached to curtain rods, and then hung with clips. There are no modifications to the quilt, and only a few screw holes in the wall.

One of the smaller quilts has a curtain rod pocket, so on that one we don’t use clips, just run the rod through the pocket.

If you’re looking for more than a plain curtain rod, you can use something with more character. This is a rug, but you could do similar with a quilt. It is hanging from a polished piece of wood using fishing wire that has been sewn through the rug. The wood itself is also hanging from a loop of fishing wire. Two screws have been put into the wall to hold the fishing wire. Those screws do double duty holding up other pictures.

5

I like that approach. Very interesting.

Also interesting are the comments about putting screws/hangers/etc in the wall.

Is that really such a problem? Not for me.

After all, it takes about 3 minutes’ effort to patch a hole from a screw or hook.

6

Nah, you got it right. Quilts are an art form.

Another option is to fold the quilt in half and drape it over a curtain rod. You only see half the quilt at a time, but no sewing or other modifications to the quilt are needed.

7

Years ago one of my then-wife’s pals was a quilting nut. As in she had a 20x30 foot quilting studio in the basement with several under construction on separate large tables at any time. She had hundreds (no exaggeration) of quilts she had made on display in their home. Plus of course all the ones she’d given to every friend and family member and neighbor she’d ever met. She was very skillful, and very sweet, but frankly kind of obsessed about making the things.

Some were hung as folks upthread have shown. But they had several walls that were lined with what could be described as shallow book shelves or an array of square cubbies. Each cubbie space was about 18" x 18" x 8" deep. Hubby had made these in his woodshop, but something like that could probably be bought with a little hunting.

Anyhow, each cubby contained a quilt that had been folded to fill the space and show of some key aspect of the work. So in effect the wall was a solid surface of quilt-like squares, each one of which was itself a visible sample of a complete quilt. It made a very pretty patchwork.

If you don’t have too many you could arrange the shelves high enough in the room that the dog wasn’t inclined to pull them down and use them for sleeping surfaces or chew toys.

Hope some of this idea is useful too you.

8

That’s an interesting thought too. One of my ideas was something akin to those triangular display boxes for US flags (I have my Grandfather’s coffin flag (navy) in one of those) but for the quilts I’d do squares.

But a sort of quilt bookcase could be nice too

Lots of great ideas, everyone.

9

A variation of echoreply’s ideas, if you don’t want to poke holes in the quilts:

Hang a curtain rod or a towel rack on the wall. Fold the quilt double, and just drape it over the rod.

10

My family had a billion quilts, too, courtesy of our great grandmother. She’d suffered a major stroke at a very young age that left her unable to speak and mentally impaired in other ways, but she made quilts fanatically. All of her children/grandchildren/greatgrandchildren got quilts at birth, on ‘significant’ birthdays, for graduation, for engagements and weddings, on and on. They were genuine works of art, and we appreciated them, but there are only so many quilts the average person can use or display, at least until they establish their own households.

So most of them were stored away in the attic, to keep them ‘safe’, because putting them on beds would subject them to use/wear and tear/require them to be washed and thus likely faded, over the years. So there they sat in the attic, wrapped in some special archival paper, in special archival cardboard boxes. Until we finally discovered there was a sneaky leak in the roof that had been allowing water to seep in and soak into the pile of boxes. For how long, we don’t know, but long enough for mold and mildew to take hold. :frowning:

We washed the quilts that weren’t utter losses, and started using them as bed covers, regardless of pets and younger children. Yes, they suffered further damage from wear and tear from this, but at least they were finally being used and loved and appreciated, even the embroidered white cloth ones that were left with permanent stain we never couldn’t bleach out without decolorizing the embroidery. I sleep under one of those to these days, though I have a plain white matelasse(sp?) bedspread that I keep over it for protection now.

Anyway, all the quilts I’ve seen displayed have had ‘channels’ of some ordinary white cotton fabric hand sewn an inch or so below the top edge to allow rods or dowels or such to be threaded through for support. By sewing only through the backing and some of the stuffing layer, you don’t mar the beauty of the top/visible layer.

You might want to be careful not to hand quilts directly across from windows, especially southern ones. Sunlight doesn’t just fade (bad enough) but will eventually rot the cloth.

11

Shower curtain rod works well, too. It could double as a window curtain if you’re hard up for drapes.

12

We have lots of quilts. Many of them were bought from thrift stores. Some of those are clearly hand made, and some have tags. Aside from the few special ones on display, the thrift store ones are used as bed covers and blankets.

Those get washed a few times a year, but have held up very well. A tear or popped seam can be easily fixed by people more skilled at sewing than me, but I think all of the damage like that was present when we acquired them.

It seems to me a well made quilt is pretty durable.

13

This is one way to do it. Mrs. Martian is an avid quilter, we have tons on the wall some of which we cycle through the seasons. For smaller quilts designed to be wall hangings she attaches little plastic rings like these to the top corners and uses regular picture hooks:


For larger hangings she uses the fabric channel and curtain rod method.

14

I had to look that one up. This is what I found if anyone is interested:

Matelassé refers to a unique weaving or stitching technique used to create a textured fabric with a raised, quilted appearance. Matelassé fabrics are often used to make coverlets or shams, combining the decorative charm of a coverlet with the tactile appeal of quilting. The result is a luxurious, slightly puffed texture that adds sophistication and depth to your bedding. Matelassé coverlets are renowned for their intricate patterns and can be used as lightweight bed coverings or as elegant layering pieces.

15

Thank you. I’d wondered. A collection of pics being worth several thousand words, here we go: Matelassé - Google Image Search .

16

My Mother started a very active quilting group at her church, and this is about the way most of them displayed quilts. The quilt was folded in half over a wooden rod (closet rod) and the ends placed into brackets mounted on a wall. (Or sometimes a picture wire attached to each end, and hung from a hook centrally mounted up on the wall.)

They said this was the best way: nothing done to the quilts, no clips putting pressure on the quilt, and no keeping them folded up, so least damage or wear to the quilts. But does require a fair amount of wall space.

One person even had several such wooden rods, all pivoting at one end – she could have several quilts on there at once, rotating the rods to display the selected one.

17

Quilts are generally heavy. And generally 5-ish feet on their shorter side, if not longer. If you’re going to simply fold a quilt over a rod, that says the rod can only be supported at the ends; any additional wall brackets along the length of the rid would interfere with the quilt hanging down the back side.

Which in turn suggests you’re going to need a very stout rod. Not impossibly stout, but something substantial. Prior planning will be essential.

18

We have two German tapestries hanging on our wall in the living room. When we first hung them we used the curtain rod method echoreply describes:

It worked well except the tapestries would slowly begin to bunch together at the top as over time the clips would somehow close the gap between themselves.

When we had them cleaned professionally the cleaners (Ray-Burt’s in Portland) recommended that we attach little loops to the back of each one which would make them hang better and provide less visual clutter. We agreed and had them do the modifications and now I think they hang well:

The tapestry as it looks hanging on the wall (as you can see it does tend to start bunching up a the top a bit, but not nearly to the extent the clips did):

We still use a curtain rod to provide the actual support:

The now permanently attached (and hidden from view) loops. They’re spaced about 6 inches apart across the full width of the tapestry:

The other tapestry, showing the lack of visible hanging hardware – except for the rod, which I think looks fine:

If I wanted to hang a quilt and knew that the quilt would likely never again be used as an actual blanket I would use the same system to hang it as we’ve done with the tapestries.