Quilting Accessories

The basics for any quilting setup:

• Rotary cutter and mat: Faster and more accurate than scissors for cutting fabric. See our rotary cutters and cutting mats.
• Quilting rulers: Acrylic rulers with grid lines for measuring and cutting straight edges, strips, and angles. Browse our quilting rulers.
• Pins or clips: Hold fabric layers together while piecing. Quilting clips are popular because they don't distort fabric.
• Thread: Quality cotton or polyester quilting thread in 40wt or 50wt for piecing and quilting.
• Batting: The middle layer of a quilt. Quilt batting comes in cotton, polyester, and blended options.

A quilting ruler is a straight-edged acrylic tool with measurement markings used for cutting fabric strips, squares, and triangles with a rotary cutter. A quilting template is a shaped guide (curves, circles, feathers, arcs) used for marking or cutting non-straight designs. Rulers are essential for piecing. Templates are more specialized for applique, machine quilting motifs, or curved piecing. Browse both in our rulers and quilting templates collection.

Not necessarily. Many quilters do free-motion quilting on a standard sewing machine using a walking foot or darning foot, with the quilt rolled and managed by hand. A quilting frame holds the quilt layers taut and flat, which makes quilting larger projects much easier and reduces puckering. Frames range from small tabletop hoops to full-size floor frames for longarm machines. If you regularly quilt anything larger than a throw, a frame saves a lot of frustration. See our quilting frames and systems.

A walking foot (also called a dual feed or even feed foot) has built-in feed dogs that grip the top layer of fabric and move it at the same speed as the bottom layer. This prevents layers from shifting during quilting, which causes puckering and uneven seams. A walking foot is highly recommended for straight-line quilting, stitch-in-the-ditch, and binding. For free-motion quilting with curved designs, you will use a darning foot instead. Browse our walking feet collection to find one for your machine.

Most quilting accessories are designed for domestic sewing machines. Longarm machines use a different set of accessories:

• Needles: Longarm needles have a different shank and are not interchangeable with home machine needles.
• Rulers: Longarm rulers are 1/4" thick acrylic. Standard 1/8" quilting rulers are too thin for longarm use.
• Thread: Thread is the one crossover. Most quilting thread works in both domestic and longarm machines.
• Bobbins: Longarms use M-class bobbins, while most home machines use Class 15 or Class L.

See our longarm accessories for machine-specific supplies.