Northumberland Strippy Quilt

A “Durham” or North Country strippy with good provenance and excellent quilting.

Here is a North Country strippy to compare with the Welsh strippy which follows. It was made in Northumberland, an area famed for its quilters. This particular one was made by Annie Walton (nee Wallace), who lived on a hill farm on moors near East Woodton – (nearest large town- Hexham). The house no longer exists but the seller (Annie’s great nephew) called it the coldest house in the world – Annie was never warm after marrying farmer George Walton, and lived in her “mac”. Annie was “as tough as old boots” – heating and lighting was provided by candles.

“I remember visiting her as a child – we had to cross the moors from East Woodton to get there, and I used to dread it – on the way we passed a gibbet used to hang poachers in the last century. It gives you an idea of how bleak the area was. As farmers they barely scratched a living but were self sufficient and had all they wanted” Annie fished for trout until her eighties, and died with all her teeth.

“After a day of sewing and reaping, milking, cooking, cleaning, darning and child rearing, Annie spent her time quilting (by candle light). All hand stitched, the time these quilts took to make was measured in winters, not hours”

The quilt was made as a marriage quilt for the sellers’ grandmother so must have been made about 1920. Grandmother had it for “best” and hardly used it.

The quilt is made of cotton poplin with machine sewn strips 7” wide. There are ten strips. The quilting is neat and fine, with 9 or 10 stitches per inch. The white stripes are stitched with an elaborate daisy and swag pattern and the pink strips have a running feather motif with infill. The reverse side is white cotton. The quilt measures 76 x 82 inches and has butt edged seams finished by hand. The wadding is a thin cotton.

“She had a memorable life, and a memorable death. At the age of ninety something, she was whitewashing the kitchen ceiling – walked off the end of the kitchen table and broke her hip. Pneumonia set in and that was that.”

The photo shows Annie Walton on the left, and the sellers Grandmother on the right of the farmhouse door.

First Purchase - Durham Strippy

Here is the first Durham quilt that I bought on Ebay - in 2006. I was disappointed when it arrived - although colourful, it seemed very scrappy. I had not yet learned to "read" the Ebay descriptions properly, and did not appreciate at that time how important scanning the photos carefully is.

But, luckily, this quilt has grown on me...

Most people think of quilts, especially patchwork and strippy quilts, as being made of scraps - recycled fabrics - however, the typical strippy was made of two lengths of fabric bought especially for the quilt, and not made up of scraps. The strippy format was a convenient one - the fabrics could be made into a cheerful quilt without much wastage. The quilt was simple to seam together on the sewing machine - and the strips meant that the quilting designs were easy to mark, within each strip.

This quilt is an exception to the rule, as it is made of various offcuts - some strips are pieced, and some strips are made up of several very narrow strips. There are a lot of selvages here! Of course, the paisley red strip is a stand out - but there is a floral panel, once very bright, now very faded and almost invisible, on both sides. The quilt would have been much more colourful originally.

The quilting pattern is a bit hard to see - it is an overall pattern (I guess the strips were too small to have the usual quilting patterns). The centre is a large flower-type pattern with very large flat iron type devices. The outer border has fans and a swag and bellows type border.

Here is the border pattern -and a good view of the paisley red with the peacocks ( a clue as to the Indian origin of the paisley pattern?) Can you see how the yellow strip is made from more than one fabric?

Another view of the front - on the left is the faded panel which once must have been very colourful. The yellow strip is made of several pieces of fabric as is the pink one.

While strippy quilts are thought of as utility or everyday quilts, of course in very poor households, they were often the "best" quilt.

Here is the back of the quilt - more subdued colours, but still with the narrow strips seen on the front, and a twin of the faded panel on the front.

The edge of the quilt - you can see that, as with many north country quilts, this has a machine finished edge. You can also see that the strips were sewn by machine.

This quilt has no provenance, but came from a dealer in Morpeth in Northumberland - it measures 84 x 60 inches. The wadding is cotton.