thumb|Mrs. Bill Stagg of [[Pie Town, New Mexico, with her embroidered patchwork quilt that displays all 48 (at the time) United States state flowers and birds, October 1940]]
right|thumb|Patchwork quilt: 1992 Kentucky State Winner
thumb|Mabel Ritter, Patchwork Quilt, c. 1936 from the [[Index of American Design at the National Gallery of Art]]
thumb|Ella Josephine Sterling, Patchwork Quilt, c. 1936, from the [[Index of American Design at the National Gallery of Art]]
A patchwork quilt is a quilt in which the top layer may consist of pieces of fabric sewn together to form a design.
Originally, this was to make full use of leftover scraps of fabric, but now fabric is often bought specially for a specific design. Fabrics are now often sold in quarter meters (or quarter yards in the United States). A "fat quarter" is one square meter (or one yard by the width of the fabric, typically ) folded into four and cut along the folds, thus giving a relatively square piece of fabric on a side, as opposed to buying a quarter of a meter off the roll, resulting in a long thin piece that is only wide. Early uses of applique in the United States included efforts to expand the effect of expensive, imported European fabrics in early America. The dense printed patterns were cut out, spread apart on a background of plain fabric, allowing the effect of the rare fabric to spread further. and takes various forms in many cultures, the block-style patchwork quilt became a "distinct expression" of nineteenth-century America, evolving into a representative folk art of interest to scholars that is still produced today. Eighteenth-century patchwork "was a ladies’ leisure pursuit" and Quebec in 1726 made of silk. The lack of information about earlier quilts As a heritage object with distinctive patterns, the patchwork quilt has come to be particularly associated with Canada and the United States. A twenty-first-century offshoot is the barn quilt.
Quilting was a very popular early American pastime, first in the Midwest, where quilting circles were a common social pastime for women, and later on the Great Plains, especially from 1825 to 1875, where quilting bees, when many women gathered around a quilting frame and quilted, became important social occasions. Such affairs might last overnight