This humble Welsh wholecloth is nutmeg brown cotton sateen on one side, and deep cream on the other.
This shows the two fabrics side by side:
It is filled with an old blanket, with some additional sheep’s fleece as wadding.
It has the typical Welsh layout of a circular ‘coin’ at the centre with double lines separating the borders from the central area.
The unknown maker will have drawn around templates to mark her quilting design; studying the quilt closely shows that she has needed to adjust the placings of the leaves on the outer border to fit in a whole number.
On two opposite borders, the large beech leaves are placed regularly forming a zig-zag. However, the leaves on the two other borders are placed at increasingly steep angles.
It is proposed that the quiltmaker was easily able to plan the even positioning of the leaf template eight times across the first section to be worked to form the first border, as this was all visible at the same time. When this section was rolled on, the quilter placed the first two leaves of each side border at an angle to match the zig-zag arrangement that had just been worked. However, when the quilt was rolled on again, the newly exposed section available for the remainder of the side border was too large for two leaves, but not large enough to accommodate a further three leaves at the same angle. So, the decision was made to squeeze in three leaves at a tighter angle.