New Quilt

  Just a quick post to show my latest black border quilt.

This is a small quilt and quite light. The machine quilting indicates that it is a quilt rather than a comforter but the filling is very thin.

There are some lovely fabric designs here. It`s difficult to make out as they blend together so well but the lower panel is made up from two pieces of fabric. The duck egg blue background to the print on the right is wonderful .

I love the design of the fabric at the top of this picture. Although it has faded a lot, I can see what a striking effect it would have. Imagine it as a quilt back!

The fabrics used in this quilt are heavier and coarser than any that I have come across and I think they are furnishing fabric offcuts.

More Welsh quilts soon......

Red and White Quilt Top

This is my only other piece that is red and white.  Originally purchased from an eBay seller in America, it had no provenance.

It is difficult to make out in the pictures but the majority of the red blocks are a tomato shade but at some point the maker ran out and around the edges they are a deeper red in colour.

It is quite a large top and I decided to hand quilt it with red thread in a lobed pattern.

Some of the blocks in this shot are the darker red shade.

It was a perfect winter quilting project. It was quilted in a hoop and as the wadding is wool, it kept me very cozy. Unfortunately it had to be put aside so I could work on a quilt for my brothers wedding.

I think it is about time I got back to work on it.

Kaleidoscope Quilt

Half of the top is now pieced.  It`s slow progress but the pattern is beginning to show more clearly. I`m very pleased with the effect.

I`m hoping to finish off the other half this weekend.

Red and White quilts

On the 23rd of March the American Folk Museum will be hosting a display of over six hundred red and white quilts. Taryn from the blog Repro Quilt Lover is asking people to post about the red and white quilts they own and linking to her blog so we can have a virtual exhibition.

I don`t own many red and white quilts and the one I do is probably the saddest specimen that will be appearing. 

This is a single bed sized quilt. Rather thin and worn but the pattern is quite striking.

It hardly counts as red and white now.   It`s had a hard life and is more like a red and dirty grey.

Each of the white blocks are quilted with a sunflower pattern. The quilting is all hand done....

...because if your sewing machine quilted like this it`d be sent for repair pretty quick!

I do have a wholecloth Welsh quilt with some beautiful quilting but it`s more of a burgundy and off white so may be a bit of a stretch to include it.

You can see one side of it under my heading photo.

A Quilt for Saint David`s Day

On the first of March we celebrate the feast day of our patron saint, Saint David.  

I had hoped to find a red, white and green quilt to match the colours of the Welsh flag; this is as close as I can manage.

This side was a lovely tomato red colour, unfortunately it has had a very hard life and the red fabric is brittle and stiff and the red colour is wearing off in places.

It`s difficult to make out the quilting pattern, I hope you can see it.

It has the traditional central circle with a four leafed design which looks similar to a Horse Chestnut leaf.

Spirals are a very common feature in Welsh quilts and this one has them in abundance.

Here they are filling out part of the design on the edge. You can also see them in the central circle and in the border surrounding it.

The single leaf forms part of the design in other areas.

This is the back of the quilt. The quilting design is almost lost in this busy little sprigged print, which does look slightly green in this shot.

Quilted with some snazzy red thread too....

But in places the quilter has run out and used plain white thread instead.

Welsh quilts were frequently wadded with carded wool, sometimes gleaned from discarded scraps caught on fences or hedgerows. This wool can been seen in the worn patches of this quilt

Hopefully we will soon have a public holiday for Saint David`s day. In the meantime we will wear our daffodil or leek in remembrance.

Oh and if you happen to be in New York this evening, you will see that they have lit the Empire State red, white and green in honour of Saint David. 

Thank You New York! 

Copper and Beige Welsh Quilt

It looks like someone didn`t buy enough copper fabric for the front of her quilt and had to do some creative filling out.

The fabric looks silver in the photos but is actually a beige colour.

Here we can see it filling out one of the corners of the quilt.

A rather jazzy 1930`s print is also used on three out of the four corners. It is the print that makes up the back of this quilt.

A close up view of the central pattern. I wonder why the maker didn`t just use the beige fabric on the two ends of the quilt rather than have that tiny central strip.  

Here a  'Welsh Pear'  is used to fill out the awkward space around the circle.

The pattern was derived from the shapes on traditional Kashmiri shawls. Factories in Paisley, Scotland produced their own versions that were cheaper and they became very popular in Wales. In fact they almost become part of the national dress.

Sidney Vosper`s famous painting 'Salem' shows a lady in traditional Welsh dress with a magnificent Paisley shawl. 

Some people think that you can make out a devils face in the folds on her arm..... 

A characteristic of Welsh quilting is that it pays little or no attention to the underlying pieced work. It`s difficult to make out but the corner fan is quilted across all three parts of the quilt.

And this is the back. I don`t think you could pick a fabric better designed for hiding quilting stitches if you tried! 

This is another weighty quilt. Almost certainly with either a blanket wadding or tightly packed, carded wool.  It has to be something woolen as this quilt absolutely reeks of moth balls, almost to the extent that I thought someone had been trying some DIY dry cleaning with petrol.

It won`t be going within a hundred feet of a naked flame!

They`re not all black....

Here`s a few photos of a one of my sadder and rather worn quilts. It`s rather light in weight with a cotton wool filling and handquilted in clamshell pattern.

 No black fabric at all in this one but it still has a few things in common with the black border quilts. A lot of the fabrics in this are in small pieces,

Here at least five thin strips of fabric have been sewn together to make an eight inch patch.

A couple of worn areas. You can see how the dyes in the darker areas are weakening the fabric compared to the background. That second motif looks rather Japanese in style.

This is a lovely design don`t you think?

Some of the fabric patches show faults in printing.

Here are two roller printed cottons showing faults in the roller printing process. The white patches are where the fabric has become folded or creased and the dye hasn`t been able to get to these areas. The three red stripes are interesting. I thought at first they were part of the pattern but then I spotted them on the second piece of material.

Are they part of the manufacturing process. Or maybe they mark imperfect and rejected material?

And finally some more fabric stamping.

You could almost make out the lettering here....does the last word spell 'SHOW'?

I find these rough and ready quilts a lot more interesting than a perfect quilt.