How I Like to Hang My Quilts

1. Before you go to hang your quilt, a sleeve must be attached on the back and a dowel prepared.  Depending on the overall size of your quilt, make the sleeve 1-2 inches shorter than your quilt width.  Attach it to the back of your quilt with a simple whip stitch and make sure it has “give” so the quilt does not bow away from the wall once hung.  To prepare the dowel, cut a rod the length of your sleeve, minus 1/4 inch.  Sand off the rough edges and screw an eye-screw into each end of the dowel.  The diameter of the dowel will be dependent on the overall size of your quilt.  The smaller the quilt, the thinner the dowel.  You can use round dowels or flat.  I tend to use the round dowels with my smaller quilts.
2. Assemble all that you need: Hammer, nails, level, dowel and quilt… pencil and (possibly) a measuring tape (not pictured).
3. Visualize where you want your quilt and mark one end using the eye screw as a guide.  In this step you may want to use a measuring tape to center the artwork on your wall, or to get it the right height.
4. Hammer the first nail where you made your mark.
5. Hang one end of the dowel on the nail.  Using a level, locate the place where you will need to put your next nail, again using the eye screw as a guide on where to place the second nail.
6. Hammer nail #2 into the wall.  As you can see, I didn’t bother marking my wall.  I simple held the nail and dowel in place while hammering.
7. Thread the dowel into the quilt and hang one end.
8. Hang the other end of the dowel onto the nail making sure not to pinch the fabric of the sleeve between the nail and eye screw.
9. Voila!  Step back and admire the work!

** A couple of comments came in quickly after I put this post up and I wanted to address them here.

• In regards to how wide the quilt could be: The widest quilt I’ve used this for is 60 inches.  That’s not to say I couldn’t go wider.  I’ve found the wider the quilt, the sturdier the dowel must be.  For my largest quilt, I used a slat that is 2 inches by 1 inch.  I also used much larger eye screws and nails.  The slat, eye screws and nails must be able to carry the weight of the quilt.  For really wide quilts you would have to look into either a really large slat, or some other method of hanging.
• How do I make a sleeve?  For my smaller quilts, my standard is to cut 8 inches of fabric cut the width of the quilt.  Fold over the ends, sew them up, then fold in half and make a tube.  This is good tutorial fodder so I’ll do one on this topic later.  Hope this helps!