haptic pleasures This Christmas my family made a rag rug together. Like many families in this mad and increasingly bad world we are treasuring and prioritising analogue entertainments as a bulwark. Despite the global chaos, 2025 was for me a year dominated by the connections and comforts that the four humble pieces of wood that… Continue reading The Cymbeline Rug: Rag rugs in the frame.
When Quilt Folk called last year and asked me if I wanted to share the story of Elizabeth Sanderson (1861-1933) and teach modern folks to hand quilt in a frame this summer, it was pretty much my dream brief. I'm not even going to try and claim any kind of historian's impartiality, because I am… Continue reading The Pragmatic Sanderson Star Quilt
My 'Remember Me' quilt is currently on loan to The Quilt Collection, hanging at the huge event, Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, UK as part of The Quilt Collection's 'Pattern & Print 1780-1840' exhibition in the summer of 2024. This post expands on the significance of the embroidered quotes included in its frames. I wrote… Continue reading Remember Me: Text and Textile Sources. FOQ 2024.
I just finished stitching a little cot quilt for a friend and colleague's baby. It's been a few years since I stitched for a baby and the experience had me nostalgic and reflecting. My friend is a historian of eighteenth century relationships, and so I knew straightaway that I wanted this quilt to reference Georgian… Continue reading British Baby Quilts in Space and Time 1700-1990.
Hand quilting a wool eighteenth century quilt in a flat frame.
I quilt in a flat frame. It is a technique that seems to invite a curious fascination, carrying as it does, a lot of historical baggage. This blog post aims to answer some of the questions that I regularly receive, and also to address some of the common misconceptions that those reactions are often based… Continue reading Hand Quilting in a Frame
Emotional Journeys: The British Quilt in Space and Time. Filming The Swaledale Farm Quilt, c1890-1900. The Quilt Collection of The Quilters' Guild of the British Isles. Last summer I collaborated on a lovely film which explores why quilts survive within families. I chose to talk about The Swaledale Farm Quilt, probably made in the 1890s… Continue reading The Swaledale Farm Quilt
North country strippy quilt from before 1850. Antique British quilts made modern. Hand quilting.
In my mind, the magic of a quilt is its ability to travel through space and time telling stories about the people who made it, loved it, and the places where they lived. In making a quilt by hand, we perpetuate a long chain of work that women have done for generations. Whilst every generation… Continue reading The Agnes Bentham Applique Quilt
In the summer of 2017, I recorded a contribution to a radio programme called Moving Pictures which appeared on BBC Radio Four. That programme was exploring a quilt called The Ann West Coverlet which is in the V&A Museum. At two places on this huge and complex coverlet were the small words, embroidered over a… Continue reading The ‘Remember Me’ English Frame Quilt.
Deborah McGuire 