Cot Quilt from Saltburn

Here is a cot quilt from Saltburn, Cleveland. It is a small north country patchwork and has not been cut down from a larger quilt. It is cheerful and has some nice fabrics. I'm not sure how old it is, but  I think about 1900 with some older fabrics. The quilting is in white thread with a cable design.

Some of the seams have popped....but the central red hexagons had deteriorated and looked unsightly. Now, usually I don't repair my old quilts, merely wash them if the quilt looks dirty and if it is safe to do so. But in this case, I thought that it would be OK to oversew some little patches in an antique fabric. The repair could be undone if needed.....

The patches were all slightly different shapes, due to the age and distortion of the fabrics. A little hexagon shape did not seem to work. So, I traced the twelve patches onto polythene......

...and made twelve little paper templates. 

The twelve patches, ready to sew to the quilt.....in an antique red paisley fabric.  And, below, the finished result. This quilt was bought at an antique shop in Saltburn called Northern Lights, and would have come from a local auction house, now closed. Its about a meter square in size and is all hand sewn, except for one patch that has been saved from a machine sewn item. There are a lot of "poverty pieces", even small patches are made up of two or three smaller scraps of cloth. There are some half mourning fabrics here.....a nice little quilt.