The Hawick Quilts

The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles was founded in 1979 and between 1990 and 1993 undertook the British Quilt Heritage Project, whose aim was to examine and document quilts and other related items made prior to 1960, that is before the revival in interest in quilts and quiltmaking which gained momentum in the 1970s.  The outcome of this project was that in 1995 the Quilters’ Guild published "Quilt Treasures of Great Britain".  On page 132 of this book the following paragraph appears:

“Fund-raising sewing activities, particularly quilting, were organized by many churches in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  In Hawick, in the Scottish borders, all the church guilds in town quilted and once a year there was a two-day sale of quilts.  Production of the ''Hawick-style' quilts in the 1920s and 1930s must have been quite considerable, since the distinctive designs of these quilts were recognized at East Grinstead, Edinburgh and Swavesey as well as locally, in Kelso.”

One of the quilts in the Guild's collection was made by Mrs Janet Pow.  I have been researching Mrs Pow and the Hawick Quilts over the past couple of years.  The research topic was suggested by Bridget Long, a luminary of the BQSG, at a research day in London a few years ago, when she was pointing out some of the gaps - a bit like the holes in Emmenthal cheese only larger! - in our knowledge of quilts and quiltmaking in the United Kingdom.

4 November 2007  This morning I presented my research paper on the Hawick Quilts to the British Quilt Study Group at our annual seminar; this year it was held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.  I have thoroughly enjoyed researching this topic, and found the presentation fun to do.  It was lovely, too, that two members, Gilly Rose and another lady whose name I did not get, had brought their own Hawick quilts to the seminar, so I was able to look at two more.

The paper will form part of the next edition of Quilt Studies, which is the journal of the BQSG - see the Quilters' Guild website for further information.