If you’ve been following along with our newsletter for a while, you’ll know this year is our 40th Birthday and we have decided to give away a birthday present to one of our newsletter readers each quarter. Each gift has a connection to a piece from The Quilters’ Guild Museum Collection, collected during one of the four decades of our existence. 

Our birthday gift for the third quarter is a 12 pack of Fat Quarters from Liberty of London’s ‘Hesketh House’ Collection, generously supplied by EQS! This birthday gift links to a piece which was collected during the 2000s, Colourwash Stripes by Deirdre Amsden.

Deirdre Amsden is well known for her colourwash quilts and has refined, explored and developed the technique since making a crib quilt with Liberty lawn remnants in 1978. In ‘colourwash’ quilts, small patches, usually squares and/or half square triangles of printed fabrics, are graded into washes of colour, by putting light areas against dark ones. Lines of quilting stitches are then added to soften the blending further. From this deceptively simple beginning Deirdre has developed complex ideas relating to changes in size, illusion of depth and transparency.

Colourwash Stripes, Deirdre Amsden, 1987, The Quilters’ Guild Museum Collection.

About this quilt, her first large-scale colourwash project using an assortment of printed fabrics, she states:

” The idea for this quilt evolved from a smaller striped design. The stripes are diagonally intersected to create a symmetrical design of elongated hexagons with a zigzag border at the top and bottom. “

For a detailed study of the influence of Liberty fabrics on patchwork, see Elizabeth Betts, ‘Print with Print: The Role of Liberty Fabric in the post-1960s UK Quilt Revival’ in Quilt Studies, 11 (2010).

All newsletter subscribers will be automatically entered into the prize draw for this birthday gift. The winner will be drawn at random at the end of July. The Guild’s decision is final and the winner will be notified by email.