We’ve been at home in Scotland since we returned rather abruptly from Portugal in mid-March. We haven’t been travelling since then; we’ve been keeping our heads down, staying very local, and getting to grips with a lot of new projects. This is the story of one of them.

I made this quilt for the chaise in our sitting room. The chaise, a gift from Isobel, is beautiful, but it has a hard back rail in need of some padding.  The fabrics in the stash were unpromising – a little dull, formal perhaps. And definitely not normal quilt stuff, being wool-type fabrics for the most.  I tried a sample block – then another, and another. Slowly, it became something quite different.  And the quilt’s story has been expanding in my head as the quilt itself has grown.

I’m not a quilter.  I’m a sewing meddler.  I do a bit of dressmaking, usually altering an existing garment, or unpicking and re-making as something else.  My first quilt came about in May 2020 through a combination of lockdown and a large stash of fabric scraps.  

This is the second (fabric) quilt I have created.  Quilts of Covid II to IX are mostly barn quilts, and that is another story.  Many stories are sewn into Quilt X.  I shall find a way of physically attaching the stories to the quilt – somehow!  

The main creation and assembly was done using Flora, my Singer 99K sewing machine. Made in Clydebank, Scotland, in 1952, she’s older than me.  She’s been with me since 1971, and together we have tackled hundreds of projects, from silk christening gowns to canvas tents.

That table I work at is a huge dining table, Victorian, inherited from Isobel when she moved to a smaller house where there wasn’t room for it. It fits perfectly in what I call ‘The Atelier”, and has become the focus for all kinds of projects. For the first time ever, I can cut stuff out on the table instead of on the floor.

All the fabrics came from ‘the stash’.

The small pattern ‘Black Watch’ tartan was given to me by Barbara, left over from one of her projects.  About 1995.

The grey and green fabrics were given by Janice when she moved back to New Zealand a couple of years ago; I suspect they’d been in her stash for some time, too.

I bought a bag of Harris Tweed offcuts in Oban when we stayed there last year to pet-sit for two beautiful Husky/Wolf dogs.  The offcuts proved perfect for the effect I was aiming for. I was given a couple of the iconic labels for my finished projects, and one is attached to the front of the quilt.

The bright ‘windows’ come from some material I bought to make sofa covers, maybe 15 years ago; it wasn’t tough enough for that, so has been lurking in the cupboard ever since.

The backing – well!  I bought this in Montrose when I was newly married, in 1980, to make curtains.  They were never made; then we moved to a house that already had curtains, and there wasn’t enough material to cover the 3m drop anyway.  Some of it got made into duvet covers, and I used some last year to make covers for the chaise.  This was the last piece, and there was only just enough – I had to patch two pieces together to complete the job.  Only the tiniest offcut remains.

The binding was made from my last pair of uniform cargo pants from my job at Historic Scotland before I retired in 2018.  The strips were carefully cut to avoid the worn patches on the knees (weeding) and the seat (cycling to work).  I couldn’t resist attaching the little logo alongside the label.

The batting or wadding came from Sandra, who is an experienced quilter; when she heard I was having a go at making my first quilt, she sent me a bale.  It’s been enough for both quilts, and had the advantage of reducing her own stash before she moved back home to Australia in July 2020.

I was given the gold embroidery silk used in the label by Isobel who had inherited a big stash of silks from family members.

The design is known as “Log Cabin”.  Those bright windows at the centre of each block are said to represent the heart, or the home.

After the main assembly was done with Flora, the Singer, I hand-quilted the whole piece, securing the top to the batting and backing.  Quilting thread was my only purchase for this project – from Laura, at Fabrication in Haddington. The binding was also finished by hand, while sitting in the sun in St. Mary’s Pleasance in Haddington.  The label is my own unskilled embroidery on a patch of those cargo pants.

The project was accompanied by audiobooks; principally Ailsa Piper’s ‘Sinning Across Spain’, read by Ailsa herself, and her book of correspondence with her friend Tony Doherty: ‘The Attachment’, read by both of them.  Both wonderful books, and they are permanently stitched in to the fabric of this quilt along with so many other memories.

Haddington, September 2020.