Which Way is Up?

One of my non-quilter friends asked me once, "Do quilts come with instructions that tell you which way is up?" In the end, it all comes down to the direction from which the quilt is going to be viewed.

Most quilts have two purposes.

1. They can go on a bed.
   
2. They can hang on a wall.

Bed quilts might be symmetrical, facing into the center of the bed, such as this one.* In New England, very old quilts from the 1800s often had notches cut into the corners to fit around bedposts and over the pillows. These quilts very definitely had a particular "Up!"

Usually a pattern for a quilt will tell you which way is up. It all depends on something called the "setting." The setting is the arrangement of the blocks into a larger quilt. A lot of people buy patterns for quilts, but sometimes people make their own "settings" of how to put the blocks together.

On the other hand, you might have a quilt where all the blocks are the same and they are a pattern that can be viewed from any direction. In this case, it might not matter which way you put it on a bed or hang it on your wall.

*I did not make this quilt. This is a picture of an old one that I found in a book.