Quilt Kits: Guilty Pleasure?

by Steffani McChesney

Quilt kits have been around for a long time. Some of the first kits were offered in The Modern Priscilla magazine in 1916. These were appliqué quilts with the pattern placement stamped on a plain white background. The quilting pattern was up to you to figure out. Twelve blocks and a border cost $3.50. I guess you provided your own fabric for the appliquéd pieces. This type of quilt kit was very popular for many years and is still offered today in mail order catalogs such as Herrschners and Lee Ward.

Once derided as “sew-by- numbers” not “real” quilting, kits have evolved since those early days. Now you can find quilt kits for all levels of skill and taste using all the ancient and modern quilting techniques. They even show up in judged quilt shows.

Kits are an especially good place for a beginning quilter to start out. If you are a little more experienced, but still not fully comfortable picking out your own fabric, a quilt kit might be an option for you too. Use the kit as a tool to figure out why the designer chose the fabrics he or she did. Pay particular attention to value. When quilters say they have trouble picking out fabric it usually means that they are only picking out fabrics in the medium value range so there is not enough contrast in their quilts. Look closely at the kit you are interested in making and ask yourself what is it you like about it. Is it the colors the designer chooses? Is it the pattern or technique? A kit works because the designer has chosen fabrics with light, medium, and dark values for contrast to emphasize the design. Watercolor and blended quilts are the exception to this rule and should be banned from the planet in my opinion. Not enough contrast.

A 2003 survey found that quilt kits account for “a substantial percentage of the $2.27 billion quilt industry.” Shop owners report that customers fall in love with the finished sample hanging in the store and buy the kit. Quilt kits have a high percentage rate of completion according to the shop owners, with customers coming back for more. (Not so many UFOs.) Kit sales tend to generate more quilters when friends and relatives see the finished product and the relative ease with which it was completed. Kits also give quilters the skill and confidence to go on and design their own quilts or, at least, chose a pattern and fabric with the surety that they will like the end result.

I have been quilting for a long time, since the mid 1970s, consider myself a pretty good intermediate level quilter, and have been known to make a quilt kit now and then. I like to use kits for a couple of reasons. If I see one that features a new technique or tool it’s an easy way to learn the technique or how to use the tool. I also like to use quilt kits because I can usually finish them rapidly without much thought or worry. These are the quilts I give away since I don’t have a lot of personal energy invested in the fabric choice or design. The ones I really agonize over I keep.

Quilt kits are a guilty pleasure in some ways but they definitely have their place in the quilt world. Anything that promotes and encourages people to take up our beloved craft is “a good thing,” as Martha Stewart would say, though she hasn’t been saying that much lately.