Out & About: Wemyss School of Needlework and Fife Folk Museum

Log Cabin Quilt at Fife Folk Museum

As part of the C&G Diploma in Patchwork and Quilting that I am teaching, the students are required to produce an illustrated history of the past two hundred years of patchwork and quilting.  This is an area that interests me and I have a number of books on the subject, but no actual examples for them to examine.  And seeing real quilts brings it to life.  So the hunt was on to find some antique quilts reasonably locally.  Whilst Glasgow Museums has a great collection of embroidery, there are not many quilts in their collection and apparently it is very hard to get an appointment to view them (I'm willing to be corrected and visit the collection if I've got this wrong!). 

One of my students in the other Diploma class, Catherine Palmer, had been investigating where she could see quilts and had made a visit to Fife Folk Museum last year, where a lovely volunteer, Margaret, had looked out all the information she could find on the quilts in their collection.   So I got in touch and on Tuesday we went to see the quilts.  As it is a bit of a distance from here, we combined it with a trip to Wemyss School of Needlework, which is relatively close by.  Wemyss does not have a huge collection of quilts, but it is also good to be aware of other forms of stitching and they had some lovely examples of embroidery.  

Viewing at Wemyss School of Needlework

The sun shone and it felt like a bit of a road trip - especially when the sat nav on my phone directed us to the waste transfer station in another village 15 minutes away!  
However, when we finally got to Wemyss, there was a lovely sense of calm in the 

Workroom.  

More of Wemyss School of Needlework

On the huge table there were some examples of quilting laid out for us, along with some exquisite embroidery and records of the people who made them.  Fiona Wemyss gave a great talk, setting the collection in context and then we were free to look around for a closer examination.  Photos of specific textiles were not allowed, but general shots were, which is what I have here.  There was also a well stocked embroidery shop, which was raided by many of the students (and me!).

Enjoying the sunshine at Ceres

On to Ceres, to Fife Folk Museum, and they had not fibbed when they told me it had a great cafe!  The cakes were wonderful.  We had a private viewing of the quilts which had been specially hung by some of the volunteers.  We had a lovely session examining the quilts and the records in detail, sharing our knowledge of quilts with the volunteers, whilst they filled us in on the history that accompanied those quilts.  

Unflattering student photo at Fife Folk Museum

My photos are not great or numerous as my phone battery was almost dead by this point!  

Blurry photo of a lovely hexagon quilt at Fife Folk Museum.  I got very excited by the red fabric, which had lots of regular holes in it - where a different colour dye has eaten the fabric

I'd highly recommend a visit to either place and will definitely be revisiting the Fife Folk Museum soon - it had lots of other interesting things to see, but we ran out of time.  Well, actually, we chose to have coffee and cake rather than running round the other galleries!

This silk quilt at the Fife Folk Museum had a lovely paisley shawl as its backing

Scottish quilt history introduction

Scottish Log Cabin

As part of the C&G Diploma in Patchwork and Quilting, the students need to learn about the last 200 years of their local quilt history, so for my class that is British quilts.  I wanted us to go and visit a collection of historic quilts, but there isn’t really one locally.  I think many of the museums have one or two, but that wasn’t enough to justify a visit.  However, there is nothing like actually seeing and touching the quilts to bring them to life.  Luckily someone suggested I got in touch with Hazel Mills and she in turn suggested that Jan Rae could help and both of them came out here on Saturday to share their quilts and knowledge with us. 

A Hawick broken heart quilting pattern

I’m sure it was of benefit to the students, but it was also magnificent for me.  Although I have a reasonable knowledge of quilt history, as I am interested in history in general, Hazel and Jan were amazing.  Their combined knowledge was huge and we learnt about many different styles and types of British quilts.  For example, I knew about North Country and Welsh quilting, but I hadn’t heard of Hawick quilting, with its distinctive broken heart pattern and often thistles too.  As we expected, there were many wholecloth examples, which of course, don’t photograph well and so seemed much more impressive in real life than just as illustrations in books.  Jan also explained about ‘Comfy’ quilts, an actual brand name of manufactured quilts, which were very popular for a while.  They are completely reversible.

The 'Comfy' Quilt

The C&G syllabus says the students should also be aware of regional variations.  So as well as the wholecloth quilt showing the broken hearts and thistle indicative of Hawick quilting, we saw some other distinctively Scottish ones, such as this lovely blue based log cabin and also an unusual (for Scotland) quilt with Turkey Red stars.  

Turkey Red Star Quilt

This was fascinating as one quilt history book I had read said that there was no quilting tradition in Scotland.  Obviously, this isn’t true – maybe it is just more hidden or less celebrated than in other countries or part of the UK.

Looking at the log cabin

Although we were concentrating on British quilts, we did get to see some other gems such as Hazel’s Kantha from India.  Jan also brought along some American quilts and it was interesting to see the differences.

Hazel's Kantha

An exciting part of the experience was being able to handle these quilts, all of which were in fantastic condition.  For example, it was amazing to feel the variations in wadding between a wool one and a cotton one.  Indeed there one was which we were still unsure at the end of the day whether it contained wadding or not, it was so fine.  Another had obviously been washed several times and the wadding had split and concentrated at the quilting.  It made it a lot easier to see the quilting patterns when you held it up to the light.  It was a really privilege to be able to handle all of these quilts.  I’m incredibly grateful to both Hazel and Jan for sharing all their knowledge so generously with us and bringing quilt history alive for us.   I also have to admit I did my ‘fan girl’ bit and got Jan to sign my copy of her book ‘The Quilts of the British Isles’ – the best book on the subject!

My favourite was one of the last ones we saw – made almost entirely from quarter square triangles, this quilt was a very patriotic one.  The red and white triangles divided the quilt, like the bands on the Union Jack flag and in the border, used in bigger chunks was a fabric celebrating the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887.

Queen Victoria Golden Jubilee fabric

8 easy steps to a wonky-ish log cabin quilt

Friday’s class was all about Inktense and we had an interesting time exploring it on fabric and paper.  Yet again, I forgot to take any pictures.  Oops.  Must add it to my lesson plans to remind me!  This week is a design day, coming up with random ways to make unusual abstract quilts.  It’s going to be entertaining!

Apart from my classes and making new work, I’ve been rather occupied making a new baby quilt.  It is a while since I’ve made one and it was fun to be back making a more traditional quilt.  As you can see from the photos, the new baby is a girl (our great niece), which meant the quilt took a bit longer.  I have lots of blues etc I can use in a quilt, but absolutely no pink.  So a special shopping trip had to be made. 

Lovely view out of the window!

I love log cabin quilts and playing around with the format and this is what I did for this quilt.  It measures 36 x 48in and was made from only 9 fat quarters, including the binding.  Here’s how I did it (in a very quick 8 steps):

1.   Use one fabric for the centres and cut 12 3½in squares

Use one fabric for the binding and cut into as many 2in strips as you can get.  Join these strips together into one long strip, which can then be made into double fold binding.

2.   From the remaining 7 FQs, cut each one into a variety of 1½in, 2½in and 3½in squares.

3.   Choose the 3 lightest FQs and use these for the first two rounds of adding strips and use the remaining 4 for rounds 3&4.

4.   I tried to be organised so that no colour would end up being repeated in the same block, so each of the 3 lightest FQs were used on 4 centres each, varying the width of the strips.  Then each of these 4 centres had a different colour for rounds 3&4.  It sounds a bit complicated, but it is obvious when you are doing it.

5.   I made all the blocks at least 13½in square (I had to join a couple of smaller off cuts for the final rounds).  Some have two complete rounds, others three.  I then placed my 12½in ruler at an angle on the block and trimmed to size.

6.   The blocks were placed on my design wall and moved until I was happy with the arrangement and then I stitched them together.

7.   I followed the shapes of the blocks and free-machine quilted lines within them, before adding the binding.

quilt laid out on the floor

One very cute little baby girl now has her quilt to do with as she wishes, but hopefully she will have as much enjoyment as my kids have from theirs.  Even now, they are still on beds and are used as tents, rugs and princess capes!

Inspiration: Classic Quilts from The American Museum in Britain

 

This post was meant to be about my work in progress last Wednesday, but I have had a horrible week of migraines, so I don’t have any work in progress to share with you!  Here’s hoping this week is more productive.  Instead of my work, here is a book that makes up part of my vast collection, ‘Classic Quilts from The American Museum in Britain’.

If you have never visited the American Museum near Bath, it should definitely be on your ‘go-to’ list.  It has a beautiful, peaceful setting looking out over a valley of green fields, lots of folk art and American history.  Last time I was there, which was admittedly 1996(!), there was a Civil War re-enactment, which echoed loudly across the valley and a special exhibition of Candace Bahouth’s work. There seems to a different special exhibition each year and I have fancied visiting many of them, but since moving north of the border again, Bath isn’t really the most practical place to go.

So this book brings back many happy memories of visits to Bath pre-children.  But there is more to it than that.  Written by two of the curators of the museum, Laura Beresford and Katherine Hebert, it gives a short, but fascinating, history of the museum and of its amazing quilt collection.  The rest of the book is devoted to individual quilts, each with a full page, full photograph, accompanied by some beautiful detailed shots and a short history of the quilt and the block/technique used.  It covers many of the best known American styles, such as Log Cabin, Baltimore, Amish, Hawaiian, Double Wedding Ring, etc. 

I liked this hexagon quilt, especially how it points out how the pattern can be seen in more than one way –which way did you see first?

This Trip Around the World Quilt was also amazing.  It is on-point, each square is one inch square and is individually quilted.  Wow!  Its maker is unknown, but it was presented to Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the 32^nd President, who created a role for herself in promoting traditional skills as a way through the Depression.  It was also used by the Roosevelt family, which I think is nice, rather than just sitting in a cupboard or being in a museum all its life.

The book is relatively speaking rather old now, published in 2009 and I purchased it from PostScript Books, which can sometimes have amazing textile books and museum catalogues on offer – well worth checking out now and then.

And now, whilst I am migraine free, I’m going to get on with some stitching.

 

Classic Quilts from The American Museum in Britain

ISBN: 978-1-85759-598-7

Scala 2009