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Glite Dictionary
quilling

quilling

7.5
A craft that uses thin rolled paper to make pretty designs
  • noun
  • /ˈkwɪlɪŋ/
translation icon : quilling
  • At the art fair, I admired the intricate designs made through quilling by local artisans.

Examples

  • Quilling, Martin, and Hartsfield (1990) describe a statewide planning system developed by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the University of Missouri-Columbia's Department of Practical Arts and Vocational-Technical Education.

    Academic text (1993)

  • She spent the afternoon practicing quilling, creating beautiful paper flowers for her scrapbook.

  • He learned quilling from his grandmother, who taught him how to curl and shape paper strips into elaborate decorations.

Surface Forms

quilling singular
quillings plural

Morphology

quilling = quill (semi-transparent) = quill + ing

The word is formed from quill + -ing, but the specialized craft meaning is only partly predictable from the base word.

Etymology

Quilling comes from the old tool quill, which means 'a bird's feather', because people once used a feather to roll thin strips of paper into tight curls. So quilling is the craft of making pretty curled paper shapes by rolling and gluing those strips.