Tips for Mounting Art Quilts on the Wall

Many years ago, we all, who were kind of addicted to quilt making. Started making quilts that were no longer for the bed they weren't made for keeping us warm anymore, they were made for pure decoration. We started making quilts for the wall. And, ever since then, we've kind of had this battle between how are we going to display them? How are we going to hang them?

What can we do to make them easier to hang and to look more like artwork on the wall? One of the ways is to mount them, and mounting them has become one of my go-to ways of showing my work. And there are lots of different ways that you can do this. This small piece was quilted. The edge was finished with a funky little stitch.

And then I mounted it on a piece of pre-stretched canvas. So pre-stretched canvas is simply a canvas that a painter would paint on. Here's a larger piece. I painted the edges to match the edge of the quilt so that when you saw it from the side, it would be attractive. I glued it down with a permanent fabric glue, nobody's ever going to see the back of that quilt and it's perfect and ready to hang.

I have hung a hanging apparatus on the back and it hangs beautifully. As soon as you pull it out, away from the wall even if it's 1/2", it looks more professional. This next piece is mounted on board. This is just board, it's artists board and it's called Masonite board. And so I painted the board, the backside and the edges black because the outside edge of this piece was black.

It's not, it's stiff, it's not gonna be soft anymore. This is what my board looked like, so it's just Masonite board. They're cut in lots of different sizes. They're relatively inexpensive. The size was $2, painted quilt like set on top, nice.

Easy to hang with a hanging apparatus, ready to go on my wall. Now, sometimes I will put a paper backing behind these, the canvas, that sort of thing, so that you can't see the quilt, depends on how I finished that. So here I have a quilt that is actually pooled around the surface of my mounting apparatus. And the mounting apparatus happens to be these wonderful things which are actually called stretcher bars. And they're what the canvas is wrapped around.

So, you can see those stretcher bars here that make this piece, and then the canvas is placed on there. And these simply fit into each other like so and form the frame. Really easy to use. So this piece, because I pulled it around to the back and it has all that raw edge there, needs to have the back covered with something. So I would cut a piece of tag board the size of the frame and glue it to the back before I put my hanging apparatus on or I can use foam core board and I can do the same thing.

And that's going to give it a very professional finish. This piece needs the same thing done or at least it needs the inside here painted but I like it better if it has that tag board or foam core board on it. Another option that I like to use is canvas board. So it's the same type of ideas this board but it's actually a really heavy duty cardboard inside that has been wrapped with canvas. And then I'll paint it, whatever color I need to paint it, and then I can mount my quilt on it.

In fact, one of the things I like to do is take something that's already mounted on something else and mount it on something a little bit bigger to put another sort of frame around it. So we can mount these things so that they come off the surface of the wall better and look more professional. Remember to use only products that are acid free so that they're not going to rot or deteriorate. Make sure that you use high quality glues that are made for fabrics and or papers. Mount your next art piece.

You're going to be very pleased with the result.