White Weardale Quilt

Here is a really lovely quilt made of white or light cream cotton sateen - no provenance but it has an interesting story attached to it! It measures 98 x 80 inches, so is a large quilt. The patterns are really stunning on this one, and the quilting is nicely done with good depth.

Here is the centre medallion - a centre rose with circles of shells and running feathers. It is fairly typical of quilts made in this area.

Around the edges are running feather borders - compare these with the last quilt - the feathers are fairly straight on this one. And the quilter clearly didn't know how to turn a corner - she just ran the feathers right off the edge of the quilt!

Another photo of the medallion and the corner treatment.

The story goes - Christine (who I bought it from) lives in Whitley Bay and often goes to the Tynemouth market, where she bought the quilt from a furniture dealer. He had found it in a large linen chest bought locally - this quilt had been left in one of the drawers. Perhaps it was an unused gift - it looks unused. The quilt was actually being used to wrap around furniture in his van!! It's amazing that it survived in such good condition.

When Christine got the quilt, it was BROWN - only after two hand washes and a trip down to the laundromat did it emerge as a light cream colour.

The postscript is, I came home one day from work to find my son Tom vigorously washing this quilt in the bathtub with soap - he had washed his skiing gloves and set the wet gloves down on my stack of quilts - the black dye had seeped out of the gloves onto the top quilt, this one. Luckily the dye came out and the quilt was none the worse for its further washing. I did note that, when the quilt was wet,you could see that the cotton wadding does have bits of cotton seed in it ( I don't know if this signifies anything - perhaps that it is a bit older??).

This is the same lady that I got my Allendale quilt from - and the paisley panels - I have also just bought another £50 quilt from her, interested to see it when it arrives. I just wish that I lived near a north country market! Christine does say that the supply of quilts is rather erratic - sometimes nothing, then suddenly you find a couple. She usually washes and repairs them before selling them online. Thank goodness there are other people that are interested in old quilts.

By the way, Borderline Quilter has just posted a Durham quilt that lives on the back of her sofa - it is a good example of a Hawick quilt - see her post here: http://borderlinequilter.blogspot.com. The hearts with the thistles are very distinctive!!

I like this blog - the machine quilting is lovely and well done and the Borders scenery and horseriding is great to read about.