| Word | Description |
| Paper foundation | a thin piece of paper with a pattern that is used as the base for a quilt block when fabric is sewn directly on it. |
| Perle cotton thread | a soft thread that is kind of like yarn and is used for quilting, decorative stitching or embellishments. |
| Photo transfer | a technique for transferring photographs onto fabric to be used in a quilt. This picture shows a photo transfer onto a piece of light blue denim using an ink jet printer. In order to prevent the ink from washing out, you need to pre-treat the fabric with something like Bubble-Jet® or use specially treated fabric. |
| Pieced border | blocks or pieced units sewn together to make a border for a quilt top. |
| Pillow tuck | the part of a quilt that is tucked under a pillow on a bed. |
| Pin basting | when you prepare a quilt for quilting by pinning the layers together. This is frequently done when you are machine quilting. |
| Pivot | when you leave the sewing machine needle in your fabric when you turn the fabric. |
| Ply | a single strand of thread. Often thread has more than one strand, and is called two ply or three ply. |
| Prairie points | folded fabric triangles that are used for a border on a quilt. |
| Preshrinking | washing and drying fabric before you cut it for a quilt to remove the chemical finishes and shrink it so it doesn't shrink in your quilt. |
| Presser foot | the removable sewing machine accessory surrounding the needle that holds the fabric in place. |
| Pressing | the process of picking a hot iron up off your fabric or quilt top and then putting it down in another place to remove the wrinkles. When you press your fabric, you do not slide the hot iron. |
| Primary colors | the three colors that are completely unique, not made from combinations of other colors – turquoise (cyan), magenta, and yellow. All other colors are combinations of these colors. |
| Puckered seams | seams that are uneven or pulled. This can be caused by an uneven amount of tension on the fabric as it is fed through the machine. |