The two most recent additions to my small collection of books on Welsh Quilts came from the Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre.  Jen Jones, by the way, is an expat American who moved to Wales, married and has made her life there.  The first is A Towy Guide (according to the acknowledgements, the idea is/was a series of guides covering various aspects of Welsh heritage) called Welsh Quilts by Jen Jones.

Jen Jones' 1997 book on Welsh Quilts

Sixty-six pages and about 7×9 inches, this small book has a LOT of great information.  I just checked Amazon.com, but the price is a ridiculous $68 (US) and up, and you can get it for a reasonable price even with postage from the UK and a foreign transaction fee!  The chapters include:

• Introduction
• History
• Making a Quilt
• Method
• Types of Quilts
• Joining and Finishing
• Provenance
• Buying a Welsh Quilt
• Caring for Quilts
• Conclusion
• Blankets
• Types of Blankets
• Public Collections of Quilts and Blankets
• Bibliography

As an aside, I’ll note that Wales also has a wonderful weaving tradition, and for EONS I carried a Welsh tapestry (woolen cloth) coin purse that I think I bought in the UK in 1978; I recently found the little mousie made of the same cloth, and he’s now sitting on the small table on our stair landing.  Photos in the Towy Guide are both color and some black and white, but in all cases the detail of the stitching is wonderful, as is seeing the old implements used.  Antique quilts in the photos date back as far back as 1830.

The second book, Welsh Quilting Pattern and Design Handbook by Marjorie Horton,  is one that covers what I had most  hoped to find:  information about the most typical motifs and designs of the quilting.

Marjorie Horton's book on design for Welsh quilts

To my utter surprise, when I opened it up, Marjorie Horton lives in Rainier, Washington!   I googled her and found several mentions, and it appears she is still active in the Pacific Northwest and  giving lectures and teaching, but could not find a website or blog for her.   Although there is an Amazon listing, it says the book is currently unavailable.  Not quite–I bought mine a month ago, albeit from Wales.

Table of Contents and inside cover

This book, at least the incarnation that I have, is published by the Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre.  From what I’ve been able to gather, the book was originally self-published with a comb/spiral type binding.  All black and white, the illustrations are hand-drawn, which I find refreshing after all the slick graphics you see.  I love seeing the designs in Marjorie’s hand!  There is a TON of good information about designing your own, special things to note (like parallel lines to define segments), and a lot of visual imagery for various widely used motifs.

Sample pages from Welsh Quilting Pattern and Design Handbook

If you want to design your own Welsh-inspired quilt, as I do,this book is JUST what you need.  Now I realize that this may be a niche of a niche within a niche of a small corner of quilting, but oh what a find!  And if you love the quilting and traditional Amish-style quilting, I’m guessing you will find LOTS of inspiration in this book.

So I guess I might be well advised to read these books carefully, take notes, and start sketching, eh?  And oh yeah…dye that fabric so I have a 105 x 105 inch (about 3 metres to a side) top to quilt…EEEK!   On a sit down machine?  Am I nuts?  Clearly the answer is yes.  A hazelnut, please.

OK…so I amended the title a little!   The next two books are one that I have had a long time and one which I sought for a long time and focus entirely or mostly on English quilting!  Let’s start with the latter:  Traditional British Quilts by Dorothy Osler.  Most of the time over the years  I looked for this book, the price listed was well over $100!  Too steep for my wallet.  Finally, I found it at Amazon at a tolerable price for Used, anywhere currently from $18 to $32 (US dollars).

A definitive reference book

This book is cited as a reference in just about any subsequent book you find on British and Welsh quilting, and I can see why.   At 168 pages, with black and white photography (it was printed in 1987–what a long way publishing quality and images have come in just a couple decades!), it is very well researched with ample footnotes and citations.  If you are looking for a hands-on how-to book using today’s methods with lots of projects, this is NOT the book for you.  If, however, you enjoy the history of quilts with lots of photos of how things used to be done, with very crisp black and white photos that show remarkable detail, then you’ll be quite happy with this book.

Detail photos of quilting in North Country Strippy quilts

The major sections include  (remember, this is about traditional quilts, not using rotary cutters and templates!)

Part One:  Making Traditional Quilts:

• Materials and Equipment
• Traditional Quilt Design
• Traditional Quilt Patterns
• Making a Quilt

Part Two:  Traditional Quilts:  A social and Cultural History

• Historical Background  (going back to before 1200 AD)
• Social and Regional Influences
• English Quilts (North Country, West Country and Rest of England)
• Welsh Quilts
• Scottish Quilts

And the usual resources, index, and footnotes.

Saving the best for last, is Amy Emms’ Story of Durham Quilting, by Emy Emms MBE, Edited by Pam Dawson.

Amy Emms' Story of Durham Quilting

For those not familiar with British honors, MBE stands for Member of the British Empire, and is a very special honor.  This photo shows Amy Emms after receiving her medal,

Amy Emms receives her MBE

and the reverse side of this page shows the certificate signed by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth  in which she confers upon Amy Emms (getting goosebumps here) “The Dignity of an Ordinary Member of Our said Order”  and “Given at the Court of Saint James under Our Sign Manual and the Seal of Our said Order this Thirty-first day of December 1983 in the Thirty-second year of Our reign.”   Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s article on the MBE.  It is just astonishing to me and so wonderful that a woman was given this honor for being a quilter!

This photo shows the stunning quilting, North Country/Durham quilting, for which Ms. Emms is known, along with an utterly charming photograph of her having tea.

As you can see, her use of satin for her quilt (on right) and tea cozy (on left) shows off the incredible traditional hand quilting.

Amy Emms was a teacher, here in a photo from the early 50s.

As with Dorothy Osler’s book, I love that this book tells the story of quilting, the history of it, and documents that history with pictures–after all, we are quilters and LOVE the pictures!

Amy Emms (on floor in photo on right) made her daughter's satin quilted wedding dress entirely by hand. The whole thing is quilted, and the bride looks so happy! Can't you see the family resemblance? I just love seeing the faces of parents in their children (including mine!).

This book is about Amy Emms’ story, first and foremost, though there are some projects.  At the end of its 96 pages it does include some patterns of typical Durham quilting, and in the middle there is “Start with a Cushion” (a pillow in the US–it’s that divided by a common language thing again), with photos of how Amy works on a pillow cover, her traditional peg-stretcher-bar frame, with detailed instructions on how to make this pillow.  For me, what I love is the history and the photos (both historical and contemporaneous)… including the caption next to a man in a red satin quilted robe (as he holds a beverage) “This warm wrapover dressing gown is suitable for a man or a woman, but you can also shorten it to make a smoking jacket for a man.”  Anyone know of any significant others that want a smoking jacket?  Times have changed, and I love that it is documented.

I promise you…one of these days, there is a really traditional quilt coming out of my studio….

and a PS:  for any of you in the UK, if you can add some context about the MBE, please do leave comments!

OK…so most of you know me as an art quilter.  And some of you know that I adore Hawaiian style quilts, which are definitely on the traditional side.  You may not know that I am also a great fan of Welsh quilts and the quilting from Northern England!

Cover of the Catalog for the 2011 antique quilt show at the Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre.

This catalog is for the 2011 show, “Oh that Summer Would Last Forever,” and is about 8 x 8 inches and (if I counted correctly) 28 pages.  The quilts range from pieced, to the wholecloth (which I utterly adore), to applique, and date from the late 1800s to about 1930.

Let’s face it… if it is quilting, I love it!  Not long ago I discovered that there was an exhibit of quilts with a published booklet at the Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales.  Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I googled them up, wrote and asked how much it would cost to send a copy of the show catalog to Maine.  Luckily they had just gotten a new and final shipment of the catalogs, and the cost wasn’t much (under $20 including postage); in a rare example of speedy governmental service on both sides of the Atlantic, I got the envelope in about a week despite the onslaught of holiday mail. Here’s a snapshot of the flyer for the show:

Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre flyer

It looks as though this was the third consecutive year for a show, so I hope I can figure out a way to get to the Festival of Quilts, with side trips now including Lampeter, Wales!

Inside cover and front page of the show catalog

and

One of the stunning quilts... just LOOK at that beautiful quilting!

A few years ago before my quilty career took off and funds were more scarce than hen’s teeth, Thelma S. kindly sent me some handdyeds from her stash.  One huge piece (like king size bed quilt huge) was dyed this glorious peach-yellow-rose; I keep thinking of it as a sunrise.  Immediately I wanted to use it as a wholecloth.  That evolved into wanting to dye a wholecloth top the same colors, but in cotton sateen like the English north country style, with Thelma’s piece as the makes-me-happy back.  I still harbor that desire, and am slowly working my free-motion skills up to the demands of the precision of a traditional wholecloth quilt.  I’m definitely a more flow-y, free-form kinda quilter!

After reading the catalog, I went to write Hazel, the kind lady at Jen Jones’ centre who took my order (they don’t have Paypal or online ordering, so I ended up sending my credit card in separate emails, you can also fax or call her) to say how much I loved the catalog, and ended up looking at the site again.  Turns out they had three more books on Welsh quilts.  One, the big one by Jen Jones written in both French and English, would have cost a fortune to mail (so I am trying to get a copy through my local quilt shop and the US distributor for that book), but ordered up two additional books:  Welsh Quilts by Jen Jones, A Towy Guide and Marjorie Horton’s Welsh Quilting Pattern and Design Handbook.  I thought I’d share those, then decided I should also share a couple other books I have on Welsh and English north country quilts.  Since the posts would be waaaaayyyyy too long, I’ve decided to parse it out into three blogposts.

The first book I bought on Welsh quilts is actually a Threads magazine book made up of articles from the magazine, one of which was on Welsh quilts and is called Great Quilting Techniques.  But there’s not a ton of information in there… it left me wanting more, much more.  A few years ago at Quilt Festival in Houston I found

Making Welsh Quilts

Making Welsh Quilts:  The Textile Tradition That Inspired the Amish?,  by Mary Jenkins and Clare Claridge.

Making Welsh Quilts table of contents

As with so many of our quilt books, the shorter front half of the book is the back-story, the information, then there are lots of patterns for projects.  This is wonderful when you want a project book–alas, I always want more of the “not project” stuff!   That said, there is a LOT of great information here, as well as inspiring projects.  Best of all (for me) is the interesting section toward the end called “Welsh Quilting,” with designs –lots of pictures of lots of types of designs– that are typical of the actual quilting part of Welsh Quilts, including hearts, paisleys or Welsh pear, Leaves, Flowers, Spirals, Fans and Circles, Borders, and Infills.  The book would be worth it alone just for this section!

One of the pieced quilt projects

As you can see, the photography is good.  Best of all, the book is still available on Amazon if this type of quilting interests you!

I’ll be back with more of my book stash on Welsh and English quilting soon!

OK...draped over the double-sized antique canopy bed...read on!

So, you might ask, does Sarah EVER make quilts any more?  Art quilts?  Bed quilts?  Lap Quilts?  ANYthing?  Some days it feels like the answer is no, there is so much life happening that I can barely manage to get myself dressed and stumble through a day!  But I have managed a few new class samples and a few other things.  A while back, I wrote about Jenny Bowker’s totally awesome idea (seen in her blogpost,  here) and my riff on the subject here and here.

Well, I had been collecting tropical colored big prints (Kaffe Fassett, Martha Negley, Phillip Jacobs and the other designers from the Westminster Fabrics crowd) for a possible project for a possible (in a couple years) new book.  Well, I had (still have) this totally cool idea, but decided it was probably too complicated for a simple book project and, honestly, was more piecing work that I wanted to do.  Then I made my sample a la Jenny, and had a brainstorm!  A QUILT made with bright squares and simple sashing.  PRESTO–fabrics re-directed to new project.  So I got out my graph paper and charted out sizes for a BIG new bed quilt for us!

I decided to use squares of the tropical prints cut 8 1/2 inches, which meant I could get four pieces plus some leftover from a fat quarter (usually about 18 x 22 inches or thereabouts) of fabric.  A sashing that finished at 3 inches would look good.

Blocks cut, order set out on wall, vertical sashing on first six rows...

I was VERY careful cutting, and used my AccuFeed foot on my new Janome Horizon 7700.  I even went to the extent of cutting the strips on the non-stretchy lengthwise grain of the fabric because I wanted this to be perfect.  Drat!  It wasn’t!  The white pieces, on the bottom, were coming out 1/8″ too short, and I KNOW (and triple checked) they were cut to the same length.  Luckily, I am on this great Yahoo group for 7700 owners and another one for 6500/6600/7700 owners (a lot of us on the first list are also on the second one, which was the mother list).  Someone (and boy do I wish I could remember who so I can say THANK YOU) mentioned the button on the right of the machine and some instructions in the manual (yes, I had read it, but just didn’t remember this part!).  If your fabric isn’t coming out even, you can turn the knob to fine-tune the dual feed!  PRESTO! Problem piecing solved.  I told the little red guy with forked tail and spear on my shoulder making rude noises at me to go away, that it wasn’t MY piecing at all…I just needed to learn how to be smarter than and adjust my machine!

Here’s what it looked like as I was chain piecing lots of blocks and strips:

(Notice the lovely “Lemon Grass” Fiesta Ware mug amidst all those lovely prints!)

Here’s the quilt top a bit farther along,

Then I measured.  SHRIEK!  adjust border plans to smaller!  Eliminate the white what *was* going to go all around the center blocks and go straight to the pieced (from leftover bits) border of all colorful prints!  Here it is as I am ironing…. under the top is an ironing board with a 60″ wide Big Board PLUS a 39″ (one metre) wide table….and it drapes over the ends!

Aren’t those colors awesome??????

Trying to get a picture of the enormity of this thing was beyond a do-it-yourself photo shoot, so you’ll have to put up with me!  The finished top is 107″ square!

It's too big to fit...this shot, before all the borders are on, shows only 6 1/2 of the 9 color squares going across and up...so it's about 2/3 of the quilt!

That would lead to some questions:

Q1:  Is Sarah sane?   Answer:  obviously not

Q2:  How do you plan to baste this?  Answer:  I don’t; bless Doris and Debbie at Quilt Divas (great quilt shop in Rockland, Maine), they will baste it for me with water soluble thread on their longarm.  I don’t care what it costs.  I am NOT basting it.  Answer, part 2:  re Q1, perhaps she’s not as far gone as we thought

Q3:  What about the quilting?  Answer:  Yes, I plan to do it, but NOT for a while.  And at least the worst part, the basting, will be done by checking account!  Also, my big treat once we get moved in late January and next year’s teaching is done, is to buy myself an HQ sitdown model for working on very large projects.  I think a quilt 3 yards by 3 yards square qualifies.  Answer to Q3, part 2: ummm…OK, Sarah is clearly certifiable; either that or she has no life

Q4:  What quilting design will you use?  Answer:  I’ll do something similar to the sample I did  up in the links posted above.  When I shared an in  progress picture with a friend, she was concerned that the white is TOO bright.  I agree, it is!  But once it is quilted the starkness will be toned down and I think it will be a lovely summer quilt.

Q5:  Is Sarah insane?  Answer:  Ayuh!

At long, LONG last, I am able to share the fun time I had teaching for the Arizona Quilt Guild in mid-April.   As a matter of fact, the day I took these photos was the day my old laptop gave its last blink and died!   I have to tell you it was SO MUCH FUN!

To back up a couple days, I flew in to Phoenix, and taught in the greater Phoenix area the first day, my Fine Finishes class.  Alas, I was SO busy, that I utterly forgot to take photos.  My host was also the program Chair, Tari H., who signed up for all three of my classes, which were scattered about the state. So, she ended up also being my driver!  We loaded up the back of her car with her machine, suitcase, and stuff (for all the classes) and then all of MY suitcases and stuff!   The second day of teaching was sponsored by the guild(s) (both with Copper in their names) in San Manuel, a former small copper-mining-town which is roughly in a line between Phoenix and Tucson to the southeast.

I have to tell you walking into the church hall felt like going home….. the folding tables, the happy ladies, the hum of sewing machines, potluck (YUM) for lunch….   it was such a wonderful day!    One of the best things about quilters is that they are friendly and welcoming, and it really did feel  like going home.

The class in San Manuel was my Applique three (and a half) ways class:  Turned edge (over freezer paper or water soluble paper), Turned edge over interfacing (left in), fusible, and (the half part) reverse applique for those three techniques.   I use a Gingko leaf because it has every shape you will encounter:   inside and outside curves, inside and outside points, and a straight line.  I’ll admit that skinny stem is challenging as are the skinny inside points, but I figure if students to something hard in class, they’ll be more likely to tackle it at home.  If we only do easy stuff, they might not!   Anyway, we had a GREAT assortment of fabrics and looks.

As you browse through the photos (sorry about the odd placement…there is only so much I can manage in the format!), notice the thread choices, how the stitch and thread selection change the appearance of the threads.  In the black Indonesian batik, the gold thread just sings!  In the last photo, notice how different the leaf looks on the stitched side compared to the not-yet-sewn side!  In the photo at the top of this blogpost, compare the look of the different appliques.   Trying out different techniques an threads and stitches will help you decide which combination gives you the look YOU want!   And also notice in a few shots how the students have tested out stitches on scraps.  Don’t imagine what the thread and stitch would look like–try it out!

That evening we had a looooonnnnggggg drive (poor Tari!   drive 90 minutes to San Manuel in the morning, all day class, then about 5 hours back past Phoenix and up to Flagstaff for Friday’s class and Saturday’s lecture at the semi-annual guild meeting).  However, we did drive through quintessential southern Arizona territory and what was effectively a sajuaro cactus forest.  Because it was late, we were both tired, and had a long trip, I didn’t ask Tari to stop so I could snap pics, so this will have to do:

MANY thanks to the ladies of San Manuel for such a great day, and especially to Tari for being such a trooper and shuttling me across the state from south to north!  Coming soon:  Fussy threads and Flagstaff!