Historical reference needed for Strippy Quilts

Quoting from my book 'Traditional British Quilts' by Dorothy Osler:

"Strippy quilts - so-called from the colloquial term used to describe them in North-East England ......

"The oldest strippy quilt so far recorded is a woollen one, in crimson and black, made in the Isle of Man around 1840. How far the strippy quilt pre-dates this period is impossible to say, for no other certain examples of this 'everyday' quilt design are know to have survived from the first half of the nineteenth century. Most surviving strippy quilts have come from the period 1860 - 1930 when they were made in profusion in the counties of Northumberland and Durham .... ...Strippy quilts were not, however, unique to North-East England: they were common in the Yorkshire Dales and in Wales and the West of England. But the most attractive and carefully worked examples have come from those most northern counties of England ..."

(The Isle of Man is a small island in the Irish Sea, of the coast of North-West England).

Hope this is what you want Susan.

In message , Susan Laity Price writes

Have a look at "Making Welsh Quilts" by Mary Jenkins and Clare Claridge. There are a couple of people now researching the connection between the Welsh and Amish immigrants to Pennsylvania. (I did a search on this very thing not long ago, because of a local exhibit of Amish quilts.) William Penn invited both these groups to join his colony. At the beginning of the

18th century, the Welsh made up about a third of the population of Pennsylvania. And the big 2nd wave of Welsh arrived at the same time as the 2nd wave of Amish around 1850. Photos of quilts in this book bear a striking resemblance to what we think of as typical Amish quilts. The Welsh quilts are different from the North Country quilts mainly in the style of quilting. The Welsh usually ignored seams and quilted as if it were a whole cloth, while the North Country quilters tended to follow the boundaries of the strips. Amish quilts, if you look closely, seem to be quilted more in the North Country style but using many Welsh designs. the Welsh also used wool fabric more often, because it was produced locally. And the woolens usually had a more intense color than the printed cottons, also a connection between Welsh and Amish.

Here's my opinion: Strippies are really whole-cloth, which you almost always have to piece anyway because cloth didn't come wide enough for a bed -still doesn't, mostly. And sewing strips is more visually pleasing than 2 big pieces with a seam down the middle. People who start out with the plan of making a quilt would tend to use whole cloth as much as possible. The Welsh and the North Country both had many professional quilters who hired out their services, and families with enough money would employ a quilter to make all the bed covers they needed. IMO the Welsh in America, who came over as skilled miners and metal workers and earned good money, would have hired quilters too. The Amish women were (and still are) skilled seamstresses who would have picked up quilting skills with no trouble.

Also IMO, making quilts from blocks is another approach entirely. You have a pile of scraps to use up (at least our ancestors worked that way), and you need to put them together so they don't look like a pile of rags. You make each block, and only think of the whole quilt after you have a pile of finished blocks. Maybe there aren't enough to cover the bed. An obvious setting solution would be to alternate rows of blocks with strips of fabric. So 2 different directions of thought, whole cloth vs. blocks, could arrive at a similar result. Roberta in D "Susan Laity Price" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Howdy!

What a good post!

Thanks, Roberta.

R/Sandy

Good post, Roberta! I have something to add, about the "North Country" quilters, but I cannot recall the source. I do remember reading a fascinating article about the "Markers" of the northern areas of England, maybe some in Wales too. Markers were people who were ESPECIALLY skilled in marking intricate quilting designs on fabric. This was a marketable skill, and helped supplement the family income. Someone with more time and patience than I have today may want to follow up on this. Any errors in fact are the fault of the keyboard! ;) PAT in VA/USA

Maybe it was the article in QNM May 2002. Roberta in D, knew there was a good reason for hanging on to all those old mags!

"Pat in Virginia" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:21H%h.11958$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe13.lga...