Summer Display at Quilters Haven, Wickham Market, Suffolk, UK

My applique quilts, including my Hawaiian quilts, will be on display at Quilters Haven from the 28 to the 31st of May, 2015. Luckily, my Millennium Quilt can be included as it will be returning from the Quilters Guild in York soon.....after its trip to Sitges, Spain.....

The exhibition went well, and I include some photos taken at Quilters Haven....

Tea Cosy - Emma Dryden from Easington

Here is a tea cosy in corded, or Italian, quilting....it was made in 1946 by Mrs Dryden of Easington as a wedding gift, and never used. Mrs Dryden taught traditional quilting.

The tea cosy is expertly stitched and is nicely put together.

The designs are floral....

I tried to find out more about Mrs Dryden on the internet....googled various things to do with Dryden, quilting and Easington.....nothing of interest came up.....as a final attempt I searched for the more general "Durham quilters"....and suddenly this image from an archive appeared...it was Mrs Dryden....

I was able to discover that her full name was Emma Dryden, and that she lived at High Moor Farm, Easington. She had five daughters and one son, and evidently won many prizes for her quilting.

Mrs Dryden at her quilting frame...apologies for the poor images... And Emma with some of her trophies for quilting. Mrs Dryden was a friend of Amy Emms. She was older than Amy, and the seller says that it was Mrs Dryden who should be credited for starting the revival of traditional quilting.

Millennium Quilt is in Spain

I discovered this photo on the internet.....my Millennium quilt has safely arrived in Sitges, Spain...

Pink and Cream Welsh Quilt from Treorchy

Here is a Welsh quilt which came from a house clearance...it measures 200 x 200 cm or about 79" square. It is cream on one side and a darker pink on the other, in cotton sateen.

 This quilt has some very nice Welsh patterns....you can see leaves, spirals, hearts and paisley pears...the quilting stands out well due to the woollen wadding....

The centre has a circular "coin"...a spiral surrounded by four leaves...

The patterns are very pleasing....the edges are hand sewn in the Welsh manner...

Here you can see the contrast in the two sides...

The cream side...and below, the pink side. This quilt has some fold marks on the darker side,not uncommon, due to fabrics fading where the sunlight hits the folds in storage. This quilt came from a house clearance of an uncle in Treorchy, Rhondda. The  quilt came from his mother; mother's name was Phyllis Davies.... The family is not sure who made the quilt, but it had been in the family for a long time.

Tea Cosy from Allendale

Here is a little tea cosy, probably from Allendale. It is in a crazy quilt style, with various fabrics. An embroidery stitch outlines each piece of fabric.
The size is about 11 x 14 inches.

The fabrics are in s good state, but there is a bit of colour bleeding....
The seller could not remember the exact place it came from, but she used to be in the antiques trade and went to many sales....Allendale Auctions were her favourite sale room, with lots of lovely and unexpected treasures, and she thinks that it probably came from there.

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.

Mola of a Butterfly

Here is a mola, bought earlier this year. It is of a butterfly, moth, or other flying insect. I love the energy that these squares have. And I appreciate the work that goes into even a small piece of applique such as this.

The white background fabric is textured, in a pebbled sort of way, and adds visual interest when you examine it closely. At the moment, this block is near to my sofa ( aka sewing station) where I can appreciate it. At some point it will go upstairs to join the other molas that I have bought over the years.