Patchwork was undertaken by women at all levels of British society from the earliest times. Just by looking at the fabrics, colours and design of an inherited quilt, cushion or item of clothing, you might be able to surmise something about the period and places in which your ancestor lived and her social status. But, if you are very lucky, there may also be a written record of the composition of your patchwork among family papers or in the archives – a letter, diary entry, newspaper article or published poem, for example – which could conceivably tell you a great deal more about your family history.

Fabrics
The type of fabrics used within a quilt can tell you something about an ancestor’s level of wealth – with larger amounts of expensive materials obviously indicating a higher social status. Dating a quilt from its constituent fabrics can be tricky in that it might have been a long time in the making and might have incorporated materials that were popular in different decades – indeed quilts were often started by one generation of the family and finished (or repaired) by another.

If the fabrics used in your old patchwork are predominantly printed cotton, it may date back as far as the late 18th or early 19th centuries (very few older patchworks have survived). A patchwork that includes pieces of silk and velvet will probably have been made in the mid-Victorian period (post 1860, when these materials became more widely available). Patchworks including synthetic materials must obviously have been made in the 20th century; nylon for example, was not invented until 1934. If the paper templates (popular in English patchwork) are still attached to the material and are made from old pieces of newspaper or other dated material, you can be sure that the patchwork wasn’t made before the dates upon them.

Colours
Early patchwork made from material coloured with natural dyes will generally have faded quite considerably. If a quilt has vibrant colours, it is likely to have been made in the late rather than the early nineteenth century after the discovery of synthetic dyes. The first of these, Mauveine (a bright fuchsia colour), came into being in 1856. Another, Biebrish Scarlet, with a colour similar to that of cochineal was developed in 1878.

Designbr> As with all art forms, different patterns and designs of patchwork dominated different historical eras. In general terms, more complex designs proceeded from the needles of those higher up the social scale who had more leisure time on their hands, and perhaps more cultural artefacts around them to act as inspiration. The popular ‘mosaic’ designs of the early nineteenth-century were replaced by neater, less higgledy-piggledy, designs as the century wore on. Look out for ‘baby block’, ‘log cabin’, ‘crazy’ and ‘hexagon’ designs. Different geographical areas also had their own specialities when it came to design. A patchwork quilt incorporating a spiral design is likely to have been made in Wales, for instance, whilst feathers and twisted ropes indicate a provenance of the North of England. In the early twentieth century, schools of design produced more elaborate design ideas for patchwork.

Written records
Although quilters of the past were able buy job-lots of quilting pieces in local haberdashery stores, patchworks were often deliberately pieced together from fabric that for one reason or another had connections with family life or history. In some cases, these may have been recorded in private correspondence or diary entries. In 1824, for example, former governess Ellen Weeton (from Wigan, Lancashire), wrote a letter to accompany a box of materials and ribbons sent to her estranged eight-year-old daughter, Mary.

“The green ribbon is part of a large box-full my mother (your grand-mother Weeton) once had; they were taken in a prize which my father captured during the American war, between the years 1775 and 1782. The vessel was Spanish. The surgeon in my father’s ship had the box of ribbons, amongst other things, to his share, and made a present of them to my mother. I am thus minute [exact], my Mary, that you may know something of the history of your mother’s family;… The piece of patchwork is out of a quilt I made above 20 years ago; it may serve as a pattern. The Hexagon in the middle was a shred of our best hangings; they were Chintz, from the East Indies, which my father brought home with him from one of his voyages. He was never in the East Indies himself, but probably purchased the Chintz in some foreign market.”

From Miss Weeton, Journal of a Governess (Oxford University Press, 1939) Original letterbooks kept in Wigan Record Office

The provenance of the materials used in other quilts was also recorded in more public sources including newspaper articles and published poems. The Yorkshire Telegraph of 29 January 1913, for instance, included a letter from a reader describing the provenance of the pieces in her quilt:

“I saved a piece of each washing suit my little son had until he was 10 years old and then made him a quilt of the scraps… Each one told a story. For instance the blue linen scrap was from the suit he wore the first day at school; the white one was from the suit he had on when his picture was taken. He never tired of the quilt. We can entertain him by the hour, telling him of the different scraps.”

A journalist in the Gloucester Citizen, 18 June 1923, eagerly reported that he had discovered an old woman locally who had kept a treasured patchwork quilt:

There was a blue patch which she explained to me was part of her wedding dress, it had been white once, and then she had dyed it blue, and eventually it had been cut up and made into a frock for Minnie, the eldest girl, who had been married and in Canada these past fifteen years. Nearby was a bit of the gown that she had first worn on the day that she first met George – George has lain in the quiet churchyard many a year now – and little scraps of the various gowns her seven children wore. The only one that is missing is Pat’s for Pat died when he was two years old and his one garment still yellows in his mother’s press, for she cannot bear to cut it up.

Some quilts mentioned in the press had been cleverly constructed to record more specific histories. In March 1938, an exhibition at the Royal School of Needlework, for example, included a patchwork coverlet made from pieces from the dresses of the famous 18th and early 19th century actress Mrs Siddons.

Other creators of patchwork left clues to the meaning of their work in the form of poetry. There are numerous examples similar to this one from Mary Frances Adams (1873):

“Each neat square, as I sew it in, has a tale of its own to tell
And I often live in the past as I gaze on patterns I knew well.”

Like many other minor poets, Adams went on to give the provenance of certain squares in her patchwork,

“That bit of pink was the first new pink ever worn by my little Jane
Ah me! She is wrinkled and widowed now and will never wear pink again
And that is the piece of the dress I wore on the day that my lover came,
Asking me – I was then eighteen – to share his home and name;”

Mary Frances Adams, ‘Patchwork’ The Graphic, 19 July 1873

A project led by the Quilters’ Guild (www.quiltersguild.org.uk) to record the stories of quilters and their quilts is currently underway. If you are interested in finding out more about an inherited patchwork, do take a look.

Useful books and websites

• vam.ac.uk has videos of the exhibition of quilts 1700-2010 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010.
• quiltersguild.org.uk The Talking Quilts Oral History Project
• Audin, Heather, Patchwork and Quilting in Britain, Shire, 2103.
• Briscoe, Susan, The 1718 Coverlet: 69 Quilt Blocks from the Oldest Dated British Patchwork Coverlet, 2014.
• Colby, Averil, Patchwork Quilts, Batsford, 1987.
• Gwinner, S. History of the Patchwork Quilt, Schiffer Publishing, 1999.
• Page, Helen, The History of Patchwork and Quilting, 1999.