"SHARE OUR STITCHES"

by Carol Henry

No Room in Rockledge

Dear No Room,
Have you ever heard the phrase, "Hide in plain site?" Try this...Make a long skirt out of it...If you look good in long skirts, you might even wear it a few times. Be sure to point out the skirt to your husband several times to make an impression on him. You want him to remember the fabric later, after you have made it into a quilt. Then, when you need the yardage, you inform your husband you are using your clothing for your quilts. This has several advantages, besides impressing your husband on how thrifty you are by using clothing, he is also impressed with the fact you are using the expensive sewing machine for something besides quilts.

Dear SOS,
I have recently heard about Durham Quilting. What is it?

Wondering Wimauma

Dear Wondering,
I spoke with Jackie Reis, an expert on Durham Quilting. This is what Jackie told me: "DURHAM QUILTING" County Durham, in the north country of England, gives its name to the type of quilting we refer to as Durham quilting. While this technique has been done in many localities the greatest treasure seems to be in the British northern counties as well as in the country of Wales. Names synonymous with Durham Quilting are "whole cloth" or "white on white". Many times the quilts are stripy and in one book such a quilt is pictured with the reverse showing. Frequently the cloth was not white but a solid color, such as peach or blue.

The popularity of this type of quilt vaguely extends from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of World War II. Projects are divided into three groups--quilts which have old fashioned pattern, the stripy variety which makes up about 75% of the designs--probably because they did not require one to turn corners but just to run rows of bellows, waves, feathers, twists (cables) down the length of a project, and the third variety which we identify as whole cloth. The latter were promoted by George Gardiner who in the mid 1800's was considered a master "stamper", one who marked quilt tops. His main occupation was that of milliner and it is from his skill in working with feathers and other adornments that he was able to transfer such designs to cloth for quilting.

George Gardiner had under him apprentices. Elizabeth Sanderson, who came under his tutelage about 1875, is his most well know. As a student she became proficient enough to mark two quilts in a day. Eventually she took apprentices, and there are a number of surviving quilts which she has been known to have marked.

There are two reasons for the long popularity of Durham quilting. One was ingenuity of the women who lived in the pit villages (coal mining areas of both England and Wales). Frequently husbands were killed or maimed in mine accidents. To feed their families the women established Quilt Clubs. These operated very differently from the organizations that we think of as clubs. The surviving mother and/or her children canvassed the neighborhood to solicit people, from twelve to twenty in number, who needed quilts. These people would make weekly payments, and then names were drawn to determine the sequence in which the quilts would be produced. It took the Mother, working alone or with the help of an older child, a week to quilt a quilt. At the end of the twelve or twenty week period another club was formed. It was a very tedious job but kept many a family from starving.

The second reason for the longevity of quilting in these areas was the interest of the Rural Industries Bureau. In the 1920's and 30"s this organization offered to teach women to quilt and provided them with a market for their products The RIB demanded a high standard of design and workmanship. With the advent of W.W.II women were pressed into service in industry, and the need for quilting declined.

A wonderful legacy that we have from the RIB is a dozen or more large (c.20x36) paper sheets printed with quilting designs which could be combined to create whole cloth projects. In looking over the products from Wales and the North Country one soon learns to identify the origin of the project from the designs used.

(For more information contact Jackie Reis at jkreis@nts-online.net )

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