Patchwork & Quilting UK – August 2019

79

REGULAR // fi rst & last

Wholecloth quilts became a particular favourite, as I grew
to love the variety and stitch quality of pure hand quilting.
This has become a dominant feature in my own work too.
The church window border is a distinctive design found on
Welsh quilts and this was one of the antique quilts I used as
inspiration for ‘Cream of Wales’, which won second prize in
the cot quilt category at the Harrogate Show in 2018.

One of my favourite antique quilts, a red and white strippy,

was an eBay fi nd. The strong contrast between the red and

white only became popular after a colourfast dye, Turkey Red,

became widely available from the mid 19th century onwards.

The rather poor internet photo disguised what turned out to

be the most fabulous quilting designs. If you would like to see

it for yourselves, it will be one of those included in a lecture on

‘Antique British Strippy Quilts’ that I am giving as part of the

Festival of Quilts on Sunday 4 August from 15:45 to 16:30.

Particularly after I joined the British Quilt Study Group, I started

to learn more about what to look for in order to date the

printed fabrics in a patchwork quilt. I’m still not an expert but I

knew enough to recognise the frame layout and colour palette

of a coverlet when it was listed in an online auction. It dates

from the period between 1780 and 1800, when dark ground

prints were very fashionable. The fabrics include printed

dimities, stormonts, imitation ikats and full chintz (and no, I

didn’t know what most of those were until recently either!).

A number of the triangles are made up of several smaller

scraps of fabric carefully pieced together – an indication of the

care taken to use every tiny piece of what would have been

very expensive fabrics, requiring a large number of printing

processes in their manufacture.

One of the most recent quilts I have bought is a double-sided

baby’s coverlet. As always, I asked whether any details were

known about the maker or origins of the quilt. A delightful set

of email exchanges revealed that it had been made by Mrs

Lavinia Parkin – probably in preparation for her fi rst child,

Emily, born into a railwayman’s family in North Lincolnshire

in 1889. I even have photographs of the family. The fabrics

include many of the lavender prints which were a staple for the

Victorian working-class – and the border is the Turkey Red twill

again. Although the long hexagons are beautifully hand pieced

into concentric circles, the strip-pieced back and simple lines of

quilting are machine stitched.

I now have over seventy antique quilts in my collection. You

can see more photographs in the Antique Quilts section of my

website http://www.carolyngibbsquilts.co.uk or see them in person at

one of my talks. I’m having to be more selective these days as

storage is becoming an issue – but it’s a lovely problem to have!

Red and White Strippy Quilt

Detail, ‘Double sided Baby's Coverlet’, Hexagon side

‘Double Sided Baby's Coverlet’, Strip-pieced side