49DESIGNER PROFILE l e m m a b r i d ge wat e r
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shops including “pale Paisley eiderdowns and
crocheted bedspreads” – objects with character
that invoked another time and happy memories
of childhood. Emma has made many quilts for
her family. She’s developed her own improvised
style, all done by hand and often appliquéd with
bold, joyous messages that stop you in their tracks.
The quilt she made for her Mum is adorned with
the message “I Love You More Than Mars Bars
and Fish and Chips in The Rain”. For her son,
Michael, Emma made a double-sided quilt from
treasured old bathers, school shirts, and pyjamas,
with the words “They that do know their God
shall be bold and do exploits” on one side and
“Walk like Elvis” emblazoned on the other.
We talk about where else such st rong messages
are created in fabric which brings us to the
tradition of banner making by groups throughout
history – the trade unions and su ragettes – who
needed to identify themselves as they marched. For
Emma, her quilts are her banners, and appliqué
has become the vernacular through which she can
express strong personal statements of her love for
family and friends.
Emma is passionate about the process of
salvaging and preserving fabrics of everyday life
that will ultimately be pieced together to make her
quilts – “I’m exclusively devoted to recycling in
patchwork”. The prospect of buying commercially
produced fabric collections holds no appeal to her.
The quilt she made for her daughter Margaret
contains 240 four-inch patches in pale pinks,
harvested from an assortment of family items of
clothing – “all emotive as well as pretty things”.
The quilt top carries the message “Keep Very
Cosy Darling Margaret” in felt lettering. Despite
her love of quilts, the quilting itself is kept to a
minimum. Emma likes to layer up her quilts by
attaching them to a backing, such as a treasured
piece of fabric in her collection or a quilt picked up
in a vintage store. Margaret’s quilt, for example,
was stitched to an Emma Bridgewater textile and
then onto an old quilt almost faded to white and
edged with scraps of contrasting fabric.
Her latest project is a quilt for her niece,
Evangeline, and she’s already pestering
Evangeline’s Mum for discarded scraps of cotton
that she can add to her stash. She finds the process
of working on a new quilt utterly absorbing, its
narrative “tugging” at her as she considers all the
constituent parts and what meaning they will bring
to the finished quilt. It’s a way to unwind from the
pressures of running a commercial factory with
over 230 members of sta producing 1.7 million
pieces of pottery a year.
She feels strongly about everyone having
the opportunity to find their creative outlet.
She believes that “everyone should enjoy doing
something that is entirely separate from their
commercial life, that has no connection to money
and is free of pressure”. For Emma, the simple
pleasure of sitting down to hand stitch these family
heirlooms has become fundamental to a happy
life – “It turns out that the quilts are my version of
keeping the flame”.Above, Emma
at home amongst
the garden
flowers that so
often make an
appearance in
her designs
Inset, Her
daughter
Margaret’s quilt
is made of 240
four-inch squares
of carefully
curated fabrics
that all hold
special memories
hievements – they still are”.
Recognising that her
Granny’s quilts were preserving
mily histories through the
ieced fragments harvested
om much loved items of
lothing, Emma became
hooked. She loved the idea
hat these patches of well-
worntextiles– shirts, dresses, baby clothes and
household linens – infused with memories, could
be repurposed into something of new value,
knitting together the past, present and future. In
her book, Pattern & The Secrets of Lasting Design,
she recalls adding a well-worn red quilt to her
wedding list which was unconventionally held by
Stephen Long’s famous antique shop in Spitalfields
Market. It’s undergone some remedial patching
over the years “but it’s still going strong”, she says.
Emma recalls early catalogue photoshoots
styled with recycled items from the 1950s and
1960s ha ndpicked f rom local ma rkets a nd cha r it y