Green and Gold Stamped Quilt

Here is another "stamped" quilt. These designs were marked on the quilt top in blue pencil by professional quilt designers, usually in Allendale. Then the buyer could either give to to a local quilter, or quilt it herself. Church groups often sent off for these, too. You could buy them ready made, or send your own fabric to be marked. FitzRandolph surmises that most quilters lost the ability to mark the more complex designs as a result.

The colours of this quilt do not show very well in the photos. The colour is actually a pea green! Green and Gold were considered to be a popular combination.

The centre has flat iron designs with ferns and roses, and the corners echo this. Here, there is a feather creation with the longer feathers outermost....not seen this before. The swag border has little trefoil uprights. The designs were marked on large tables, so the background infill is always nicely done, unlike many other wholecloths where the grid is often decidedly wonky.

You can see that, as is common in dark coloured quilts, there are fade marks where the folded quilt was exposed to sunlight in storage.

The reverse of the quilt is gold colour. Unusually, the quilting has been partly done in green thread, partly in gold thread...one would usually expect the thread to match the right side, green in this case.

The machine edging has been more neatly done than most. You can see remnants of the blue pencil marking on the green side.

More blue pencil in this photo...a very elegant quilt in good condition.

Red and White Welsh Cot Quilt

Here is a cute baby/cot quilt. It is Welsh as it comes from Cardigan, but there are few obvious clues to its origin. As is usual with these small quilts, the design is very simple and the quilting just enough to hold it together.

Many of the patches are what the Americans call "poverty patches"; ie where two or three smaller pieces have been sewn together to make a larger piece.

Nearly but not quite the same cloth !

There are small roller printed cottons teamed with turkey red. Even where the fabrics are similar, some have faded more than others...here, one fabric has the background visible while in the other fabric the background has faded...

This quilt has been well used and I can just imagine it being made by a mother or grandmother for a newborn....

The quilting is more apparent from the back, which is in plain white cotton......it must have been quilted from this side....

Cot quilts while not rare, seem to be not so common, as often they were " used up". Few are in pristine   condition. The size is 25" square and the little quilt probably dates from the turn of the century.