Red Quilt Update

Update on the red Durham quilt that I showed in a recent post. I had an email from Lilian Hedley, who wrote "I love the red quilt. It is very much a stamped quilt but not in the normal style. Lots of stampers' templates used and beautifully drawn with a very practiced hand. It reminds me very much of one at Beamish. Quilts and Coverlets page 101 has a lot of the same templates and I am convinced it was not drawn by the quilter in Chester-le-Street unless she lived in the Allan or Weardale valley before she married. The more I look at it, the more I see how very similar they are. Lilian."



Here is a photo of that quilt shown on page 101 of Quilts and Coverlets - it would be better if you got out your own copy to look at! It is very similar in the borders and feathers, although the centre is very different. Quilted by Mary Potts of Chester-le-Street in 1939.


I wrote back "I was amazed to see the quilt in the book - thanks for spotting it - the centre is different but the borders and especially the feathers look by the same hand. Yes, I can see that the marker and the quilter could well be different people - it could have been marked by someone else and then quilted by Mary Potts. "


Interesting to see the date - 1939-I knew that it felt later in date and that is interesting to know.



Here you can see the border which is the same as the Beamish quilt.

The feathers look the same, as well.

Lilian wrote back - "You have got an amazing bargain with the red quilt. I am going to the archives with my sister next week to check up on both the Chester-le-Street quilters, my sister teaches genealogy and will point me in the right directions, will let you know what I find out."

In my next post, I will show you another quilt (early xmas present to myself) made in 1939 by Annie Penrith of Chester-le-Street for Mrs Whaley of Lanchester. Lilian (who lives in Chester-le-Street)had not heard of this quilter.