Quilling for Beginners

Quilling is one of the easier crafts to begin and one of the least expensive. Nevertheless, quilling produces some of the most ornate and beautiful designs a crafter can produce.

Quilling is papercraft which involves taking thin strips of coloured paper and rolling, shaping and gluing them together, separately or in sets, to form decorative designs.

Above and below this paragraph are a couple of works of paper quilling art to give you a glimpse of what can be achieved:

What do you need to begin quilling?

Historically, crafters have begun quilling with cut strips of paper and a dowling pin or similar to wind the paper around to coil it, but I would really recommend purchasing a quilling tool.
Quilling tools are not very expensive and you will soon discover that this is money well spent.

Quilling Tools

Most quilling beginners choose the Slotted Quilling Tool
As you can see from the picture, the slot in this tool to put the end of your paper strip into makes it easier to begin the coiling action without everything slipping.

All you do is roll the tool to create a coil from your paper strip.
The slotted quilling tool in the picture is the Creativ Dual Ended Quilling Pen. It has one end for quilling and the other end for embossing.

However, because the slot does leave a slight crimp in the center of each spiral, some experienced quillers prefer to use a Needle Tool.

With a needle tool, you curl the paper around it, rather than turning the tool. This gives you a perfect coil without the tiny crimp at the centre.
But I would not recommend this for beginners, especially if you want to get into your new craft straight away, because the needle tool does take practice to get an even coil without everything slipping and you having to begin again.

What about paper to quill?

You may wish to cut your own paper strips using a ruler and paper, but I recommend buying some quilling paper strips to begin with.

Quilling paper strips come in such a wonderful variety of colours that they will give you inspiration for your designs.
They will also be cut to the same width, which will save you quite a lot of measuring, planning and extra cutting 🙂
And they will also be in a suitable weight for quilling and that’s quite important too.

The Creativ Quilling Paper Strips in the picture are from Create and Craft. They come in 11 Colours and are ideal for making shapes to decorate cakes, cards and pictures, etc, and make a great quilling start.

As you become more profient, you will want to use patterns and designs shared by others.
These will give you quilling paper measurements for each coil. But personally, I like experimenting for myself, so that I know how much paper I will need for each coil shape.

Let’s not forget the Glue!

We definitely need glue to fix our coils, otherwise they’d just eventually roll apart.

Paper Glue is fine to begin with.

The glue in the picture is Paper Glue 1L from Create and Craft. It is a clear, water-based glue which is easy to use and shouldn’t leave a mess 😀.

As you get more proficient in your craft, you may wish to try different glues and different methods of applying glue (a ‘tacky’ glue or a fast-drying glue may be preferred once you gain confidence).
But paper glue is fine for a starter and you may well find it’s just the job for all your quilling work.

Applying glue:

At first, this may seem to be a little tricky – you may even feel all fingers and thumbs 😕. But you will soon learn by practice the best way for you to apply glue successfully.
I can give you a few hints, but quilling, like with many other crafts, is really about ways which work best for you and what you feel comfortable with.

Things to help with coiling and gluing:

Tweezers – Tweezers help you pick up your paper coils; they help you hold the coils together while the glue sets; and you can use them to delicately ‘pinch’ two coils together.

I definitely recommend angled tweezers. They will allow you to place small ‘extras’ into your coils without your hands or the blunt edge of the tweezers getting in the way 😀.

Using a dowl, a pin, or something with a fine point is useful for putting small amounts of glue on the coiled paper.
Some glue containers do have needle points for this, but if not, why not use a lid or plate you don’t use, or similar, and put small drops of glue onto that, then put the pin/needle/dowl edge into that to pick up your small amount of glue. That usually helps a lot.

The Teardrop Shape:

Probably one of the first quilling shapes you will make will be a tight circle. And circles work well with jewellery designs and as centres for floral patterns.
But many of the quilling designs you will see are based upon an open, or loose coil shape.
This means that, once you have wound your paper strip on the Quilling Tool, you carefully take it off and place it down and let the coil unwind a little.
You can then gently glue the edge down.
Once the glue is dry, take the loose coil and pinch it at one edge and you have a teardrop shape like the one in the picture below:

Of course, once you get used to how loose you want your coils to be and how to pinch them into shape carefully, there is nothing to stop you pinching the loose coil in more than one place to make other shapes, like diamonds, curved leaves, etc.
However, the teardrop shape is very useful for beginners to use:

Place two teardrops side by side and you have a hear shape.
Place several around a loose coil circle and you have petals on a flower…and so on.

Other useful quilling tools:

• A damp cloth to wipe your hands if they get glue on them.
• A Ruler to measure the lengths you need your paper for the different coils.
• Scissors to cut your quilling paper (although I have seen recommendations that torn paper glues down better than straight cut, you would have to ensure that the torn edge didn’t show).
• Stainless Steel Glass Headed Pins to hold coils in place while you make your design.
• A foam base for placing coils on (small foam one foot squares used in playmats are quite useful) and/or pinning them to (by placing the pin between the coil shape without actually pinning it!).

Tools you may wish to try later:

A Crimper.
Running your quilling paper through a crimper will give it a lovely ‘ruffled’ shape to add texture to your designs.

The crimper in the picture is from Create and Craft. It is the Creativ Deluxe Quilling Crimper. It has 2 settings – for fine or coarse crimping – and at £7.99, it is very reasonably-priced.

Needle Forms: Needle forms come in different sizes so that you can place loose coils on them to shape them before glueing, and gets lots of different size loose circles.
Personally, I have found that a collection of different large size wooden knitting needles or the blunt end of large crochet hooks work well.

And if anyone asks you what you want as a gift…

What about a Quilling book?

I don’t know about you, but I love buying a new book to go with a new craft 😉
And Quilling Techniques and Aspirations by Jane Jenkins fits the bill perfectly!

But as I said at the start, you can begin quilling with the bare essentials and work up to more tools later.

The tools I have recommended in this post are certainly helpful for beginners, especially the quilling paper and quilling tool, but other tools and supplies you may well be able to find within your kitchen or your craft box.

But above all, I am sure that you will enjoy quilling.
It’s really fun and very satisfying just to know what beautiful designs you can make.

Have fun! 😀