Do you ever get stumped as to how to quilt a top you just finished? I wanted to share with you a spectacular quilting style called North Country Quilting, also known as Durham Quilting.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries quilters from all over the UK were making these incredible wholecloth quilts, and each region had a signature style-- this made quiltmaking even more popular, because quilters would feel a lot of pride in making their quilts in their particular regional style, whether that was Welch, Scottish, Durham (North Country) or other.
Talented women and men could make a living as quilt markers-- using chalk, they'd mark the motifs and fill patterns on the quilt top fabric. So just like many quilters now will send their tops to the longarmer to be quilted, many quilters then would take their fabric to the quilt markers to be marked, so they could then hand quilt along the marked lines.
Sometimes these quilts would be pieced or appliqued, but the most iconic were wholecloth. Meaning the top is made from one piece of fabric. Quilters would mark their tops using favorite motifs, borders, and fill patterns, then would load the quilts onto their frame and hand quilt them.
We learned all about North Country Quilting in Meander last month, and we've been having fun using the structure and layout of this style but incorporating our own motifs, simplifying it, and doing it all on the machine, rather than by hand.
1 comment
Thank you for this article. I am from County Durham and love Durham quilting. My Aunt gave me her patterns for Durham Quilting and I have used some in a quilt I made. There is a woman called Amy Emms and she had a book published Durham quilting. Amy even made her daughter’s wedding dress all beautifully quilted.