This brightly coloured wholecloth quilt was probably made in 1930s or 1940s in the North East of England – possibly in Tadcaster, Yorkshire. I was told that it came from an elderly lady called Mrs Llewellyn who lived in South Shields, who before her marriage had been ‘a Smith from Tadcaster‘ but despite extensive research, I have not managed to identify her in the records.
The pink side is cotton sateen, but the reverse side is a synthetic apple green taffeta.
The centre has a large flower, made up of eight heart-shaped petals. In the middle of the flower is a feather wreath 13”(33 cm) across. This has a 6” (15 cm) double-lined circle at the centre, filled with a small eight-petalled flower.
This is quite an unusual form of this flower design – earlier quilts from the North East of England often had eight ‘flat-iron’ motifs arranged into a large flower – see the North Country Harle Wedding wholecloth.
Four fat feathers, fleur-de-lys and fans fill the rest of the central rectangle, surrounded by a neat grid of square diamonds.
The broad 15” (38cm ) wide outer border is a six strand cable with crossover.
Note the butted corner – a simple choice which avoid the complicated calculations involved in making the border swing round perfectly.
More about how to plan a cable which does turn a corner perfectly can be found at Drafting Cable Borders.
Or, you could read about other methods used in the past to avoid Continuous Flow corners at Border Corner Quilting Designs.