Quilt Wall Hanging Frame

My wife made a quilted artwork piece several years ago but we had no easy way to display it. Picture frames can be used but it is difficult to properly stretch a quilt inside a frame and most of them are quite ugly. So my wife challenged me to design a 3D printed frame that would enhance her quilt and would be simple to make. I also had the requirement that it had to fit on my 6 inch square 3D print table.

So I designed a rounded outer frame that is exactly 6 inches tall and slightly less wide. Luckily this matched the quilt she had made quite nicely. I made it deep enough so that there was room to handle the batting material in the quilt.

I then designed an inner frame that the quilt stretches over. There is a 1.5mm gap to the outer frame so that the quilt will be "pinched" between the inner and outer frame thus stretching the artwork. It also has a mounting post at one end to allow it to be hung on a wall nail.

The quilt has an upper and lower fabric layer with batting in-between. This excess material if left uncompressed would cause the frame to be pushed away from the wall when hung. So I designed a batting compression frame that snaps onto the inner frame and lightly compresses and folds over the batting so that it doesn't extend past the outer frame. This contains the entire framing package. I left gaps in these latter two frames so that they would be quick to print and would allow the latches to easily accessed for disassembly if needed.

I used red T-glase for the outer frame although any color can be used to complement the artwork. The inner frames can be any color since they aren't visible. I like to use PETG because it's flexible and very easy to work with.