Cold comforts from the farm
Quilting was once an essential aid to keeping warm in winter but eventually became an artistic endeavour
SOME of us remember the hardships. Fetching coal from the cellar; a copper boiler in the kitchen to produce sufficient hot water for Friday night family bath time in the galvanised tub that hung on a nail on an outside wall and milk frozen on the doorstep.
The treat then was running to the chippy with pyjama legs rolled up under a dressing gown and gabardine raincoat.
For Hannah Hauxwell, who died last January, all that was sheer luxury.
A tough, resourceful upland farmer of the High Pennines in County Durham, she lived a life of poverty and hardship running the unmodernised family farm in isolation following the death of her parents and uncle.
However, in 1972 when she appeared in a TV documentary documenting the life she eked out in the harsh Yorkshire winters, she became a celebrity.
Gifts of money and food parcels followed and a local factory raised money to get electricity installed for her (see panel).
That celebrity status will play a part in the sale of a group of Hannah’s quilts, some of which are pictured. Essential for warding off the freezing winters, they will be offered at North Yorkshire auctioneers Tennants on February 9 (viewing February 7-8). Estimates range from £100-£500.
All the women in Hannah’s family were accomplished seamstresses, and she herself was good with a needle. Indeed, she had a mattress filled with straw that she had made from a unique patchwork of fabrics.
Most were made using the same pattern of quilting stitches, perhaps a family pattern, and interestingly they each have three rounded and one squared corner.
One theory for this unusual feature is that the one different corner is a reminder that only God could be perfect. Another is initialled ‘E.B’, who is likely Hannah’s grandmother, Elizabeth Bayles, who worked a tapestry also included in the sale.
Quilts were born out of necessity and can be traced back to the 17th century and earlier when their reason for being was warmth, not beauty, and fabric used and reused because it was too expensive to replace.
Mother’s dresses would be cut down and remade to fit the eldest child.
Thereafter, it would be passed down the ranks of offspring until it was of no further use as a garment. At this point, out came the scissors, needle and thread and the fabric was turned into a patchwork quilt.
They comprise literally hundreds of basic geometric shapes: squares, diamonds, pentagons, hexagons, octagons, clamshells and single stripes that could be stitched together edge to edge in an infinite number of patterns.
Light and dark fabric, for example, could produce a three-dimensional effect, while other patterns included stars, rosettes, “baby blocks”, fans, wedding ring, log cabin and dozens more, all done by candlelight or at best, gaslight. Electric light bulbs were still science fiction, particularly for Hannah.
Designs were often planned on paper patterns and sometimes handed down from mother to daughter. Other patterns of a less inspired nature could be bought from a haberdashery shop in the same way as you would a dress pattern today.
All very quaint, you might think. Certainly, upwardly mobile 19th century needlewomen thought so. They adopted the idea and turned quilts into a fashionable pastime, producing exquisite and enduring examples for which collectors of today pay high sums.
What inspired them was the appearance of cheap (to them) and cheerful printed cottons and chintzes that were ideal for the job. They were brightly coloured and often incorporated designs, which adapted perfectly to the intricate patterns that are a feature of old patchwork.
As if to prove their prowess with a needle, Victorian ladies chose to make quilts with smaller and smaller patches requiring unimaginably small stitch work and in patterns that grew increasingly ornate.
Most surviving quilts found today are fashioned from cotton, but wool, silk and velvet were also used. The latter is often found in “crazy patchwork”, so called because random shapes were used and stitched together in a haphazard way.
Overlapping edges were invariably joined by running stitches, often in contrasting coloured embroidery to become an integral part of the design.
This is a later form of patchwork, dating from the 1870s.
Quilting began to decline at the start of the 20th century, the demise hastened by the First World War when mass-produced bedding increasingly replacing the need for the time-consuming handmade alternatives.
Additionally, the exodus of young women from the country to work in the previously male-dominated factories added to the decline.
The period between the wars saw a small resurgence, thanks in part to the efforts of the Women’s Institute and to a programme established by the Rural Industries Bureau in 1928, but the Second World War brought a swift end to the project and post-war, the craft all but died out.
Antique quilts are a finite commodity. In the past, housewives discarded them as old bedding and they became tractor covers, draught excluders, lagging for hot water tanks or to protect vegetables from frost.
Surviving examples should be treasured and preserved.