Rag quiting is a method of making quilts where each square is made as a whole: front + back + batting in between, as opposed to making the whole front part and then the whole back part. As a result it is an easier method to making arbitrarily large quilts, because you can connect row after row of quilt blocks one after the other, ad infinitum.
Another property of rag quilting (made of flannel or cotton) is that one side of the quilt has frayed edges around each square, giving the quilt a comfy raggedy look.
The tutorials (1 2) explain how it's done. I enjoyed reading them to get the idea of rag quilting and now I really want to try it myself!
My first ever wish when I started sewing was to sew a bedspread quilt - to cover my bed. I abandoned the idea till now because I had such other great ideas I wanted to make and also because I feared failure when connecting the two huge sides of the quilt. With rag quilting, it's possible!
When quilting it's best to have a walking foot on your sewing machine. That way the top fabric gets fed (moved along) just like the bottom fabric, preventing a case where the bottom moves further than the top and a very unhappy quilt maker This pdf shows Bernina's walking foot that I am now adding to my want list, and it also shows a really awesome quilting technique which is like an improved rag quilt - basically you make a quilt square-by-square like in the rag quilt method, but you cover up the "raggedy edges" with bias binding. I also want one of those nifty bias binding maker.
Now that this precious information is well recorded, I think I'll try to go back to sleep...
