Beginning a new craft can be confusing and expensive. Every place you look, there is another list of "must have" items or "must do" techniques to master.

Just take a trip to a book store or magazine rack and take a look at the information available for beginner quilters. Do an online search. Or cyber-walk through the pages of amazon.com. I'm sure you will find thousands of well-wishers telling you exactly how to get started in any craft.

OK. Now, you find one that looks like a good resource -- it's easy to read and seems like it is relatively complete. So, you make a list of things you absolutely need to have before you can start.

Then you decide to check your list with just one more resource -- to be sure you have everything you need on your list. That book has a list with different items on it, so you add the new ones.

Just for giggles, you decide to check out one more. And what do you find? You guessed it, even more items that this person says you can't begin without.

Quilting is no different.

I have my idea of what I "need" in order to make a quilt, and my daughter, Stephanie, has her idea. For example, I couldn't live without my plastic templates -- triangles of all different sizes and shapes. Stephanie could care less.

Yet, her quilts are more complex and more perfect than mine. (Hmmm, maybe I should stop using my plastic templates…)

So, here you are with another experienced quilter offering an idea of what you "must have" in order to make a quilt.

What makes me some kind of authority? And why is my list better than any of those others?

I've taken my 25 plus years of quilting experience and thought a lot about what it was like as a beginner. While I agree that it's nice to have all of the fancy stuff, it's also expensive to get it all.

And, what if you find out that you'd rather be crocheting after you just spent a gazillion dollars gathering quilting tools?

I've put on my "practical beginner quilter" hat and boiled everything down to 9 tools you absolutely need in order to make a quilt. These are things that every quilter would agree that you could not make a quilt without. Everything else is optional and may make your quiltmaking easier.

Think back to the pioneers of quiltmaking and the tools they used.

Thousands of quilters around the world today make quilts because they have worn out, left over clothes and can't easily afford blankets. Do you think they are spending money to go out and get the latest fancy quilting gadget?

I bet not.

Sign up for our series of 9 "tools" of quiltmaking and discover what are the very few tools of quiltmaking that you absolutely cannot live without.

• You can consider a Component as a full application that runs inside Mambo. Components extend Mambo and give it extra functionality. The output of a component is displayed inside the main content area.
• Modules are smaller, generally “helper” applications. Some run autonomously, others work in cooperation with Components. They are generally displayed around the edges of the main content area, in places defined inside the templates (called “module positions”).
• Mambots are small pieces of code that enable a new feature across the entire site. There are two types of Mambots: Those that have a visual effect (like ), and those that affect the way Mambo behaves but without adding any true visual impact (like the search Mambots).

Just to make things a bit more confusing, sometimes a function will require a combination of these tools. For example, the Banners and the Polls functions include both a Component and a Module.

While the technical distinction between these items is useful information, the most important points concern what they can do, and how you can use them. To assist with that, we have provided below a quick summary of the Components and Modules bundled in your Mambo package.