Here are some old patchwork quilts, which I love. The two bigger ones in the picture above we use on our bed in winter.
The quilt with triangular pieces was (we were told) made by sailors on board ships on long journeys. The fabric is their old shirts. This could of course have been dealer's hokum but it pleased me immensely to think of hoary old sea salts sitting on deck sewing the quilt that was now on my bed. It is embroidered with the name of a ward in a hospital where I guess it had been donated. The old flannel cloth is very soft.
The other large quilt seems very old and is in quite bad condition. The cloth has 'ripened' and is falling away from the backing. I mend it every so often but it's getting very fragile now.
Some nice fabrics in the smaller quilt too, mostly satins and silks.
This one is hard to photograph because we had it framed so it's behind glass. It's a cushion cover made of cigarette silks. The back is great too -- it's crazy patchwork. I thought we'd had it framed so that you could display either side, but when I took it down you could only see this side. It hangs in our loo.
Finally, this last quilt isn't old, or not very. In fact it's 15 years old as I made it for my son when he was born. The only interesting thing to say about it is that the pattern is one I glimpsed on a TV news bulletin -- it was on a quilt hanging up on the wall in Colonel Gaddafi's desert tent!
I hope you like my quilts -- I feel quite passionate about them.
2 comments:
I love old quilts that are actually used. They hold so much history. I am beginning to wonder where you actually store all these collections... not so much the quilts but certainly everything else!
What a lovely collection of cigarette silks. I think the patchwork made from sailors' shirts is just lovely in all its faded glory. Such history behind it.
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