Displaying and Storing Your Quilts

Now that your quilt is done, what’s the best way to display it? If you are not going to display it, what’s the best way to store it? That’s two of the things I will tackle in this week’s post. If you are like me, even if you give a lot of quilts away… you have still have a lot of quilts! Also if you are like me, you want to show them off and store them carefully when they are not on display. Let’s get started!

Displaying the Quilts

Let’s start out with tips for displaying quilts. There are so many ways to display them so I probably won’t get to cover them all, but these are ways I display mine. Let’s start with the smaller quilts.

Displaying Small and Medium Quilts: For most of my small and medium size wall hangings, I put a hanging sleeve on the back when I add the binding. Combining those steps gets those two tasks done quicker. And I like that! Here’s what a hanging sleeve looks like:

To start, cut a strip of fabric for your hanging sleeve (I cut mine about 2 1/2″ wide), fold in the raw edges on the ends of the strip and stitch. Then lay the strip, right side up, lined up with the top edge of your quilt. Pin it in place before you pin and stitch the binding to the front. 

Once the binding is stitched to the front securing the hanging sleeve, you can fold about a 1/4″ of the sleeve under on the bottom and stitch it down to the backing. See the last photo above showing how I pinned it.

Now that the sleeve is on, I can use several interesting items to hang the quilt, including curtain rods and yardsticks.

Hanging sleeve or not, there’s some other fun ways to display small quilts. I have this mini winter panel clipped on a old wooden clip board to display it.

I’ve also used frames and even an old drawer I found at an antique/junk store!

The little quilt on the right in the drawer does have a hanging sleeve so it can hang on the dowel, but if you have one that doesn’t have a sleeve, you can use small T-pins to affix it to the back of the drawer.

Displaying Large Quilts: For larger quilts, I usually don’t hang them with a sleeve, mostly because I don’t have that much wall space! For those quilts, I often drape them from ladders, over banisters, over a chair or, of course, on a bed.

Yeah… there are times I walk around the house and say “Yikes! I have too many quilts!” The basket of quilts on the lower left is a great way to have quilts available for the family to cozy up under.

Caring for and Storing Quilts

Quilts that are on display need to be cared for to avoid damage and also all those quilts that you can’t display, mostly because you have no open space, need to be stored. Here’s my tips for this. If you have some tips on caring for quilts and storage, feel free to share them in the comments.

Caring for the Quilts: Here’s my tips on caring for and cleaning quilts that are on display.

• Display them out of direct sunlight to prevent fading
• If the quilt is folded or rolled for the display, unfold or unroll them periodically and re-fold them another way. This will help prevent creases from forming in those folds.
• Use a soft brush attachment on your vacuum to carefully brush off dust, etc. from the surface of a quilt hung on a wall. Be sure to use the lowest suction setting to keep from damaging fibers and seams.
• Rotate quilts you have displayed so quilts that are precious to you are not exposed to the everyday household elements all the time.

Since I can’t have all my quilts out at time, some of them have to be stored. If you are storing quilts folded, be sure to also unfold and re-fold those periodically so crease lines do not form those quilts.

Removing Creases: Here’s a trick I have used to remove some deep creases. I lay the quilt out completely unfolded on a bed, I lightly spray some Best Press on the portions of the quilt that are creased and carefully smooth out the creases with my hands. Do not soak the area. I then leave the quilt on the bed and the creases appear to work themselves out.

Storing Quilts: For storing small quilts, I actually hang them from skirt or pants hangers and place them in a closet.

For larger quilts, I fold them and store them on shelves with a clean sheet covering them.

I have found that the sheets keep dust from settling on the quilts and keeps the sunlight from the window off of them too. Like I said above, I periodically re-fold these quilts that are not being displayed.

You can fold your quilts in a traditional way or you can try folding them as I show below. Folding them on the bias seems to reduce creases. Also this type of folding puts less stress on the fabric fibers so any creases that happen while it’s folded this way will smooth out easier. Start by laying out the quilt you want to fold on a large flat surface and make the first fold on the bias:

And then the folding continues this way until you get a folded square small enough to store on a shelf.

Here are some storage don’ts:

• Do not store them in the basement or attic of your home where the temperature and humidity is not at ideal levels.
• Do not stack too many folded quilts on top of one another. That will make the ones on the bottom crease more.
• Do not store quilts in plastic containers or bags. Plastic can trap moisture which could develop mold that will stain quilts.

If you have an extra bed in a guest room, consider spreading out quilts there, a few on top of each other. Just make sure there’s no direct sunlight hitting them. 

So that’s all I have on displaying and storing quilts. I hope my tips are helpful to you for your quilts. Remember to enjoy the quilts you have. Although you can’t have them all out, be sure to display some and rotate your displays periodically or even with the seasons. Such beauty should not be hidden!

Happy Quilting!
Deanne