Dark Paisley Welsh Quilt

Here is a very traditional Welsh quilt - not a "best" quilt, but one that would be used on the bed. The fabrics used are the dark paisley prints that the Welsh seemed to favour, and the filling is a wool blanket.

This quilt measures 80 x84 inches. Each side has a different paisley print with a dark background. The quilting is a simple diamond crosshatching.

A closer view of the diamond quilting.

Closer view of the print - more of a floral than a paisley, I guess.

You can see that the other side is a different fabric. Although this quilt was sold as "unused" I think that the fabrics are faded and would originally been much more colourful, as they would have had brighter reds and greens in them.

No provenance on this quilt, although the seller was from Swansea.

Closer view - oh yes, some paisley shapes visible on this side! The edge is a neatly handsewn knife or butt edge.

Brown and Pink Paisley Welsh Wholecloth Quilt

Here is a Welsh wholecloth in paisley fabrics. One side is mostly browns, while the other is a matching fabric in pinks.

The whole of the quilt has been quilted with a fan pattern - of course with this pattern (it being directional), you know that the quilt was loaded into the frame at one end (here on the bottom side of the photo) and the quilting proceeded towards the back of the quilt (on the top of this photo). Thus the sides of this photo were the sides of the quilt as it was in the frame.

This quilt was sold as a modern and non vintage item - however when it arrived it was apparent that it was an antique quilt. The fabric has a lovely softness and sheen that modern fabrics cannot reproduce.

Brown versus pink sides of the quilt.

The quilter did not have enough of the brown fabric and had to eke it out with some of the pink paisley fabric along one side.

I bought this quilt for only £15 - I felt guilty once I found out that it was an old quilt and offered to pay the seller more. She emailed back that she had bought it at a boot sale or charity shop for £7 and as it was her first EBay sale, she was satisfied with the amount. I steered her towards some web sites showing a variety of Welsh quilts so that she knew what to look out for in the Swansea area in the future!

This quilt measures 72 x 72 inches and is filled with wool wadding. It is from the Swansea area.

Red Paisley Welsh Quilt

The Welsh were fond of their paisley fabrics, especially in dark, rich colours. Red paisley was a particular favorite. Red was supposedly a warming colour, and it was a favoured colour for children. It was also thought to have healing properties, thus was often used to surround those ill in the sickroom. Remember those red underwear sets of red cotton flannel...?

This quilt is rectangular, 65 x 85 inches. It is a very heavy quilt as it has an old blanket as a filling. It is nicely quilted - but - the design is hard to see as the fabric is so lively. In fact, the design is the four lobed flower design, one I call "orange peel" - I wonder what their name for this pattern was? The panels are set together on the sewing machine and the edges neatly finished off by hand.

It is said by many that the love for paisley and other printed fabrics caused the demise of Welsh quilting as the elaborate stitching was not very apparent on patterned and lively fabrics. It is hard to know now if this was so.

This quilt has no provenance but was originally bought from a Decorative Arts Fair in Bristol many years ago and then sold to me by its owner in Wiltshire. It probably dates from the turn of the century.

Notice that the two sides are made of different paisley patterns - there seem to have been a great variety of these fabrics available and few seem exactly the same. Turkey Red, a process for dying cloth and fibres, was very popular as it was the first red to be fast, ie it did not fade like the earlier madder reds and also was a bright true red. You can find more about the turkey red process in the Quilt Study Journals - see Deryn O'Conner's article in Volume 1.