Quilt maple

Quilt or quilted maple refers to a type of "figure" in maple wood. It is seen on the tangential plane (flat-sawn) and looks like a wavy "quilted" pattern, often similar to ripples on water. The quilted figure is only found in the Western Big Leaf species of maple. It is a distortion of the grain pattern itself. Prized for its beauty, it is used frequently in the manufacturing of musical instruments, especially guitars. Quilted maple is an end grain figure that shows a circular pattern on flat sawn material. There are many terms that describe the shape and pattern of quilted maple, such as watered, popcorn, tubular, sausage, bubble wrap, and angle step.