I was privileged to visit the Reeth Museum when on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. Helen Clifford welcomed me and showed me several quilts, the hexagon patchwork, the beautiful mosaic quilt mounted on the wall and the red and white strippy I had requested to study. The front of the red and white strippy is made from red turkey twill fabric and white plain weave fabric. It is backed in plain white cotton and has a Turkey red binding, the wadding is probably cotton. The quilt has 9 strips and is 80” x 100”, the 7 central strips are 9 1/2” wide and the two white outer strips are 6”wide.

The arrangement of the pattern is interesting for a strippy as it has a border of parallel stitch lines in triangles and geometric curves, giving the central area a frame.

The central area is filled with a half wine glass, which is roughly marked out giving it an individual charm.

I worked in my sketch book to document the patterns and drew out (in a smaller scale) and quilted the half wine glass design. Although I am still trying to work out if she quilted it in curved lines or one circle at a time!

It is lovely to imagine a lady in a Swaledale cottage quilting this bright coloured strippy ready to put on the bed to keep her family warm over the bitter cold winter nights.

I hope to visit The Dales Museum in Hawes to see their strippys , there is certainly no shortage of quilts to study and my North Country Strippy pattern bank continues to grow.

If you are up in the Dales Swaledale Museum it is definitely worth a visit .

http://www.swaledalemuseum.org/

This pretty quilt from Liz Nally has 9 strips ,plain white cotton sateen alternating with a faded pink floral fabric.

It has cable strips, a worm with a single chain running through it with square diamonds, a double lined cable and interestingly a half fan which is quite large . It is 14″ wide, has 20 petals and is repeated 6 times along the length of the quilt.

I chose this motif to do as a sample and enjoyed stitching this pretty design .

This mauve and white strippy is an unusual colour combination and the first I have seen in this colour way. I really like it and love that the lady wanted something a little different .The designs are well quilted and drawn out thoughtfully.

There are the popular North Country Quilting designs of running feather, plait and cables. The more original design is a repeated loop enclosing a leaf with square diamonds on the outer edges .

This is my sample, a design I will use in my own work.

I wonder where she got the idea from , a magazine, an architectural detail, a piece of fabric or braid  or just created it out of her imagination. It would make a lovely border design on a skirt. Quilted petticoats were popular in the 1800s and we have had such a cold spell in Yorkshire I am thinking of making one !

I found this delightful shell pattern on a strippy quilt in the book by R. Allen ‘Quilts and Coverlets’.

Shells have been drawn and sewn on quilts though out the north, this one which could be described as a fan as well, is in a diamond block shape with parallel lines to one side and square diamonds on the other.

The following shell embroidered motifs are also seen on quilts and make an attractive addition today on home furnishings for the bathroom.

They could be added to a small project quilted or embroidered.

The rose design is repeated over and over again in North Country Quilts and is an attractive motif used on any design. The templates can easily be  made by folding paper and cutting out an ice cream shape .The rose can be 8 petals or 16. Sometimes on quilts they have been drawn on freehand and in these instances you can get a different number of petals.

The design can have straight petals or curved ones and can have various circular centres .

This rose has concentric circles in the middle and surrounding it. The rose has 16 curved petals.

On the strippy quilt I was studying from the Beamish collection this motif is repeated  to create a linear design.

Another favourite !