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I am a quilter living in Woodbridge, Suffolk who has made quilts since I was a teenager. I also ring bells! Both are great British traditions....I will try to feature some of my antique Welsh and Durham quilts, the quilts I make myself, my quilting activities and also some of my bellringing achievements. Plus as many photos as I can manage. NB: Double click on the photos to see greater detail, then use back button to return to the main page.













Thursday 3 March 2011

Green and Yellow Quilt from Ashbourne, Derbyshire


Here is a quilt from Derbyshire in a rich gold and peapod green colour combination. It is a north country quilt, but perhaps because it is from Derbyshire, the patterns are a bit different to the usual. The size is large - 90 x 80 inches and the wadding is very thin cotton. The quilting is small and very neatly done.

Here is the central quilting pattern - flat irons with roses surrounding four beech leaves. These leaves are usually associated with welsh quilts, but here seen in a very north country style. The centre is surrounded by diamond infill neatly executed.


In the corners we see scales in a triangle or bunches of grapes?? plus windblown daisies. The outer border is of fans, almost like scallop shells...


The fan border has a central device of a square with a four lobed design inside.


At the back of the quilt in one corner, is a name tag "Marion Ward". It is hard to know whether this is the owner or the quilter. The edge is hand sewn.


This photo shows the colours a bit better - a strong gold and a pea green colour. It is hard to know the dates on these quilts, but because of the colour combination and the windblown diasies, I am thinking 1920's. a quilt with good stitching made by an experienced quilter.

I have several quilts which are not from the central quiltmaking areas - outlying areas - these often have different quilting patterns, or even transitional patterns. Perhaps this is one of those quilts where quilting traditions and quilting patterns varied from what is generally considered to be "north country".

5 comments:

  1. Interesting design! I haven't seen a lot of quilts like this - will you be posting photos and writing about some of the others? :-)

    The variation on the beech leaves with the curved veins is very appealing - they go with the windblown daisies nicely (I have recently done similar flowers on a Japanese quilt, where the design is a chrysanthemum variation). I like the art deco flowers with the wineglass centres too.

    The font on the label certainly looks 1920s/30s - looks like the typeface "Broadway", see wikipedia info on its history.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_%28typeface%29

    I tried putting the label text into Broadway in Word and it looks identical. This would mean the label must be post 1927.

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  2. I would not have thought about typefaces ! but it seems obvious now...very interesting.....I have a quilt from Telford which also seems intermediate (Welsh with a few lumpy feathers) and I will show it later.I just thought that I would show a few Durhams as I had been concentrating on the Welsh quilts recently.

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  3. My mouth is still hanging open in awe. This may be the most beautiful quilting I've ever seen. Thanks for sharing such great photos.
    quiltfever.wordpress.com

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  4. Ms. Ward's embroidered label is identical to the labels we were required to sew on our things at boarding school - everything including sheets, pillowslips etc needed to be labelled to ensure it's return after laundering.
    Comparing the expert quilt stitches to the not-so-expert stitching attaching the label makes me think Ms. Ward may not be the quilter?
    Lovely quilt Pippa, thank you for showing us.

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  5. I love the gold and pea green color. I read all your posts and have enjoyed all the quilts. What a wealth of hand quilting designs are in each one.

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