A blanket is the general word for a warm covering you throw over a bed or wrap round yourself. A quilt is more specific: it is made from two layers of fabric stitched together with padding sandwiched in between, often in a patterned design. If you can feel padding trapped between stitched layers, you are holding a quilt rather than a plain blanket.
The core difference
Blanket names any warm covering, while quilt names a padded covering stitched from two fabric layers.
- blanket — a large piece of soft, thick fabric used for warmth: She pulled the blanket up to her chin and fell asleep.
- quilt — a bed covering made of two fabric layers stitched together with padding between them: Her grandmother made the quilt by hand over two winters.
How to tell them apart
Feel for the stitching. A quilt has padding trapped between two layers of fabric, held in place by lines of stitching that often form a pattern. A blanket has no such construction; it is simply a single piece of thick, soft fabric used for warmth, whether on a bed or wrapped round the body.
The mix-up shows up most in furnishing descriptions and bedding adverts, where quilt is sometimes used loosely for any thick bed covering. Blanket can also stretch into figurative use that quilt cannot, as in a blanket ban covering every case without exception, or fog blanketing a city.
