The Quilters. Part 1

There are many quilters living today who learnt their craft towards the end of the nineteenth or at the beginning of the twentieth century, and from what they have told me, and from examination of the quilts made by them and by their forebears (generally on the distaff side, though there are men, too, in the story), I have pieced together a picture of the home craft of quilting as it was carried on during the past hundred and fifty years in the countryside of South Wales and the north of England. Here women worked at the quilt frame in many farmhouses and cottages, and in a few of the great houses (though in some cases only in the kitchen or servants' hall). Many families in Wales, like that of Mrs. Bo wen whose people came from Pembrokeshire to Mountain Ash, "looked on a quilting frame as part of the home." "Quilts were part of our lives," said another, "like tables and chairs." Mr. George Davies, the son of a Pembrokeshire quilter, described a childhood memory probably shared by hundreds when he wrote: "I have the make of the frame and my mother sitting there, hour after hour, very vivid in my mind." In the north of England they were twilts and many of the older generation still use this pleasant word and speak also of the pattrons on them, though with the spread of standardized pronunciation these forms are dying out. In Westmorland I have been told that there were quilts in all the farmhouses in the old days. "A lot of quilting was done on the farms in the winter," said Mrs. Robinson; they reckoned to make a rag mat and so many quilts each year she herself made fifteen one winter, being in need of them for the farm hands and having a maid who was keen on the work.

In Cumberland, too, you would find them in every farmhouse, several on a bed. In Northumberland in the old days "everyone quilted," and most country families still own quilts, though some do not use them much now because they are so heavy to wash. Throughout County Durham there are many old quilts to be found, particularly in Weardale. The point of view of those "old days" so often referred to was expressed by an elderly lady here who, after visiting a neighbour who was ill in bed, exclaimed in shocked surprise: "Not one twilt did she have!" For many little girls the sight of mother sitting at her quilting frame might mean that they had a task which would keep them from their play they must thread a number of needles and stick them in a corner of the quilt ready for use. Several Welshwomen recalled that this always had to be done as soon as they got home from school; a Durham woman used to thread needles for an old Yorkshire quilter (born on the same day as Queen Victoria) at Guisborough, where she lived as a girl; but for Mrs. Hitchcock (Co. Durham) this task was a treat, for she was allowed to leave her lessons twice a week to thread needles for a group of quilters who worked to raise funds for the Methodist Chapel.

"Round and round I went, sticking the needles in their little pin-cushions." Stories of the old quilters show how work at the frame might be a regular part of the farm routine. Miss Humble of Weardale, who quilted and marked the patterns on quilts for a living, was never in bed after five in the morning ; the farm work was done by nine and then she quilted till noon. After dinner there were the calves to feed, and other farm jobs. A big quilt with elaborate pattern took Mrs. J. E. Peart, working together with her mother and aunt, six weeks to make in the time spared from farm work. Miss Humble never quilted by lamplight, but others of that hardy race, like a farmer's wife near Bellingham in Northumberland, worked by candlelight. Quilting and mat making was all they had to do in the long winter evenings. When this old lady died she left "a mass of quilts," some plain and some patched, which were divided among the family; one of her descendants thought she might have some stored away but had none in use. The Misses Johnson in Hexhamshire have two glass globes for magnifying candlelight to quilt by, like those which were used by Buckinghamshire lacemakers. The candles themselves were made at home candle-making day was Grannie's delight." A Welshwoman recalled how her mother would say one day: "We'll start a quilt tomorrow at nine and we'll work on it till four," and so they did. As soon as father had gone to work the essential chores were hurriedly done and then the frame was set up ; mother and daughter worked steadily till four and then put the frame aside in time to get tea ready for father, who came home at five. "If we hadn't kept to mother's plan we should never have got a quilt done; we were always so busy." I think this gives the answer to those who now say that there was more quilting done in the old days because people had more time and weren't so busy as we are now. In fact they were probably busier, because fewer necessities could be bought ready-made and many more tasks had to be done by hand in the kitchen and household; shops were fewer, and far distant from many country homes, with no buses by which to reach them quickly. But making quilts was as necessary as making bread, and therefore time had to be found for it. These statements about quilting in "the old days" (roughly 1880 to 1910) refer generally to the countryside rather than to the towns. But the craft was brought into the mining districts of South Wales and of County Durham from the rural areas. Many quilters in the Rhondda and Aberdare and Merthyr have told me that their families came from Carmarthenshire or Pembrokeshire; to the Durham mines families migrated from Teesdale and Weardale and from Cleveland (Yorkshire); a Northumberland mining village remembers that a trainload of Devonshire people brought up to break a strike included wives who brought their quilt frames. Mrs. Lace of Aberdare uses a frame which was made in Scotland early in the nineteenth century and was brought down to Wales by her grandfather, who, returning to his birthplace there after the death of his parents, selected only this and an oak bureau to take home with him. Towards the end of the nineteenth century probably the majority of quilters in the North Country, and a great many in South Wales, were what I will call HOME QUILTERS; that is to say, they made quilts only for their own families, not for a living.

Quilting was a family affair ; often mother and grannie, or mother and an aunt, worked together at the frame, and the daughters would learn, as soon as they were old enough to sew, often at fourteen, by helping their mother at the frame. Mrs. Isabella Fletcher (Co. Durham) learnt when she was eleven, from "the old lady" in the house in which she was nursemaid, who was quilting stays for the children, and who also quilted petticoats for herself. Mrs. Ritson also learnt at eleven, from her elder sister. Mrs. Hick's mother, a Nottinghamshire woman, only learnt to quilt when she came to live in County Durham ; when her older children had all gone out to work she started the youngest girl at the frame to keep her at home. Another woman remembers how as a small girl she was rapped over the knuckles by her mother when she " didn't do it right." One or two others "learnt rough" from their mothers doubtless to work on household quilts and later learned finer work and a greater variety of patterns from professional quilters. In a certain Carmarthenshire family, when mother came home with a new idea for a quilt pattern, father would clear the floor and chalk the pattern, according to her instructions, on the stone flags. When work was started on the quilt, the daughters all helped with the sewing. This was not the only man who played his part in the quilting. In the north of England, where more permanent templates for pattern-marking are found, these were often cut from plywood, or even tin, by the menfolk, who sometimes produced new shapes from their own ideas. Mrs. William Hodgson's husband always kept a supply of needles threaded for her when she was quilting regularly under the Rural Industries Bureau's scheme (Chapter Three) and he "holds the stick" (criticizes). Mrs. Reaveley told me how, in her youth, at Jarrow on Tyne, when a group of women were making quilts for the chapel funds, the menfolk would come and thread needles for them. Then they had refreshments for all and made a party of it. Unemployed husbands did the washing up when their wives were busy on quilts, because when your hands are softened by being much in water they more easily become sore from needle pricks. It was an unemployed Welsh miner who asked me once if I remembered the corner pattern on his wife's last quilt; "Rose and leaves it was; well, I worked one of those corners myself." Very proud of it he was, "The girls of the family all helped in making quilts," said a Welshwoman, "and as each was married she had all the quilts she needed." They were an important part of a girl's dowry; six seems to have been the usual allowance in Wales. In Westmorland and Cumberland quilts were always made for a girl's wedding, and in the latter county sometimes for the young man too if he came of a farming family. A Welsh itinerant quilter said she had made marriage quilts for men, and once she made half a dozen quilts for a lad who was going away to a job in the Midlands ; evidently his mother was determined that he should have his home comforts in that distant place. Many marriage quilts were shown to me in Northumberland and County Durham, but here it seemed to be the custom for just one very handsome quilt to be made by a woman for her daughter's wedding. They do not seem to have been made anywhere in this country in such quantities as in America where, Ruth Finley tells us, a bride's dower chest in the old days should contain a dozen ordinary quilts as well as the "bride's quilt" which was only made when she became engaged. A Northumberland quilter made one for her older daughter, but the younger one, a few years later, scorned the idea "because quilting had gone out then" (about 1920-30). A girl in County Durham turned down the offer of a marriage quilt at about the same time but regretted it when she read in a newspaper soon afterwards that Welsh and Durham quilts were being made for one of London's most expensive hotels. Making marriage quilts for her daughters and sometimes for her sons, cradle quilts for the new generation, and workaday quilts to keep all members of the household snug at nights, must have kept the housewife busy, and she was glad of help from anyone In the family who could sew well, and even from neighbours, who were sometimes invited in to help.

"And so the party went from house to house," said one Welsh informant, and others, both in Wales and Northumberland, also told how several neighbours sometimes four or five would work together at the frame, making a quilt for each of them in turn. The quilts so made would be only for home use ; the professional quilter, whose work was her livelihood, frowned on this communal quilting. As Mrs. Thomas (Aberdare) said: "The making of a quilt was regarded as a craft. The craftswoman would start and finish the job herself; it was something in which any casual caller was not allowed to interfere. When two worked at one frame it was a case of one craftswoman and an apprentice, who spent two years before she served her time." Mrs. Armstrong, a very fine Northumberland quilter, also said that although she had been asked to work with neighbours at the frame it was a thing she never liked doing.