Hearts and Chess Pieces Quilt

With its pattern of repeating hearts and chess pieces, this was perhaps made to celebrate a union and adorn a marriage bed. The anonymous seamstress who created this work used fragments from at least ten different printed cottons, carefully and neatly shaped, hemmed and stitched together. She has imparted her pattern in a coherent, mellifluous and gently symmetric way, piecing together fragments of cottons spanning thirty-odd years in date but all sharing soft palettes of blue, brown, beige, pink and cream, with similarly floral motifs. Inventively reusing scraps and fragments of old dress fabrics, discarded curtains and upholsteries, a pieced quilt such as this embodies not simply thrift, but also the intrinsic value assigned such textiles- as mementoes, much-loved fabrics, even secular relics of family significance.