Exhibition

Last weekend our local patchwork group held an exhibition. We have had them before, but either on a small scale, or as part of another event. This time we decided to go it alone. As anyone who has ever organised anything will agree, it's a lot of work. Apart from the extra planning meetings, there's the booking of halls and quilt stands, publicity, delivering of flyers and posters, baking of cakes, writing of labels and lists, collection of quilts and sales table items, not to mention the sewing on of sleeves (or pinning on in my case!) and labelling of sales goods. And that's all before the day!

Needless to say, all this planning paid dividends and all went smoothly during the show. Here are some photos of the event.

Sometimes it was quiet, and sometimes busy. Some people came to natter (fine by me) and some to admire the quilts.

I hope this lady isn't touching that quilt - I'll have to notify the Quilt Police if I decide she is!

Some came to spend their money at the sales table and others to eat the excellent home-made cakes. (Amazingly my banana, walnut and chocolate chip cake was eaten up on the first day! I usually have to take my cakes home and eat them myself.)

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the whole event, my day was made when a lady came with an old quilt she had bought 50 years ago, to ask for some advice. It was badly worn, and she wanted to know if it was worth repairing. Although we are not experts on old quilts, we felt that it was not. She wanted to continue using it, and even if worn areas had been replaced or strengthened, it would never have been suitable to use again as a bed quilt. If you click on the picture of the quilt, you can see for yourself how badly worn it is. I think she was impressed at how thrilled we were to see her quilt, so has loaned it to us so we can see what we can find out about it.

As you can see, it is a medallion quilt, with a cross motif in a central square of floral fabric. The glazed chintz fabric of the cross has almost completely disintigrated as have other fabrics. It is quite a utilitarian quilt, and some of the selvedges are visible in the blocks.

We thought it was probably mid-Victorian, although it had probably been reworked at some time (maybe before the present owner bought it, in the 1950s) as it had a newish green sateen backing, and some triangles have been appliqued on (see the multi-coloured floral at the bottom of the photo on the left). If anyone out there has any information or opinions about this quilt, all will be gratefully recieved.