If you have never done any quilting before, you may be forgiven for thinking that it looks fairly simple. The fact is that it requires a lot of patience, skill and diligence to make a quilt. It certainly is not as simple as it looks. It takes practice and attention to detail. Given that, you should use good quality fabrics if you are considering manufacturing a quilt.

Cotton is all right for the job, but it ought to be the lowest you will go. No polyester or other man-made textiles. If you do use these cheap textiles and spend weeks making your first quilt, you will simply regret it. If you make mistakes, but the cloth is decent at least there will be that one saving grace.

Once you have chosen your fabric, you can choose the style or design that you want. This may seem backwards, and that is OK. If you want, you can select the style first and then a fabric to match, but I would recommend that you simply stick with cotton for your first quilt.

Next, you have to get hold of a pattern. This is very easy. You can either join a local quilting group, where people will give you traditional patterns or sell you modern ones; or you can go on line and look on Google or Yahoo for 'free quilt patterns' or you can visit to your neighbourhood craft shop and purchase one that fits your requirements.

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You will also need a good set of tools to make your quilt. It is a pretty good idea not to scrimp on these tools as they are not expensive; will make your task a lot easier and will last a very long time. You will require at least one rotary cutter. 'At least one' because the large blade cutters are good for straight cuts whereas a small blade cutter is better for corners or shapes. By the way, these rotary cutters look like pizza cutters.

Because these cutters are sharp, you will also need a cutting board. This can be as simple as a sheet of plywood, trimmed to suit your table top or you can merely lay it on the floor. Without a board, you will ruin your table or carpet. You will also require dress-maker's scissors and large shears. Further requirements are pins, needles, cotton, straight edges and markers.

Your pattern will talk about batting and a back cloth and you must pay a great amount of attention to the suggestions in your pattern.

This piece cannot be a 'teach yourself quilting' manual, but I hope that it has shown you that you do not need a great deal of equipment to make very acceptable bedding quilts.  However, with only a little adaptation of the pattern, you could make some beautiful duvet covers.  Not many people make duvet covers, so you could either make them solely for yourself or sell them.