Quilts stitched with nature’s beauty
With their decorative motifs reflecting the Sussex countryside, Louise Bell’s quilts are works of art
Leaves begin to bronze across a field in East Sussex and a nearby farm studio overlooks the early autumn scene. The workroom inside is swathed in patterned material, with remnants piled up on shelves and richly detailed quilts hanging from the wall. Here, Louise Bell is stitching fabric leaves, berries and birds onto a spread depicting autumnal flowers for a brass bed. Mirrors are strategically positioned around the room to reflect the countryside beyond, and an aged cat regularly wanders in to keep warm. Louise cannot remember a time when she did not sew. Everyone in her family made things. “I remember the quilts that I had as a child and my appreciation of having something made by someone else,” she says. She follows a tradition that dates back as far as the 1300s. “I like the element of fitting pieces together and the fact that when you look closer into the smallest bit of the fabric design, you can still discover more details.”
Fabric jigsaw
Louise has been quilting professionally since leaving university in Brighton in the early 1980s, having arrived in Britain from Canada when she was 12. She generally works to commission, with interest often arising from a month-long exhibition she holds each year at Standen House, an Arts and Crafts National Trust property in West Sussex. As well as quilts, she displays cushion covers featuring seaside and farmyard motifs. Her first quilt design was based on her memory of one made by her great-grandmother, which Louise had on her bed as a child. “It’s a traditional design of squares with fans, but when I was reunited with it, I saw that I’d made a different puzzle from the same pieces. It’s probably why there are hundreds of quilt designs: people carried them in their heads and got them slightly skewed.” She sold her first quilt to a local craft shop for a window display. “After university, I thought I’d fill in time for a few months, then I got the bit between my teeth,” she says. “The shop asked for more, so I kept doing them. I made cushions, bags and jackets as well. I did a few trade shows and realised it was possible to make a living. During the recession, the little shops closed down, but I was still getting quilt orders, so I pursued those.” In the beginning, her quilts were geometric, based on American block patterns, but as a lover of plants, she has come to specialise in motifs drawn from nature. Louise is known for her wild flower designs, which she started doing 20 years ago. These days, most of her quilts have a central appliquéd panel, with a patchwork border. However, they can be all patchwork or plain, known as whole cloth quilts, with the design produced solely by the stitching. She likes to allow herself four months per quilt, though works on half a dozen at a time. “I like to know that when I walk in here, I can do what I fancy. I might have three days of solid sewing, then I need to do something else.” The quilts are made for beds ranging from cots to king-size.
Pattern within a design
Once she has been briefed by the customer, Louise works out a basic grid of measurements to show how the component parts might fit together. “People tell me the size of the bed, and they might give me a bit of carpet or photos of a painting on the wall behind, which it has to be in sympathy with. Then I gather groups of material together. But I don’t know where individual elements are going until I start.”