Quilt No.776CC - Cecelia Clarke

"Anna's Quilt.
Anna's quilt combines a, floral cotton print with blue, green, and white cotton fabrics. The last three fabrics were purchased from Nock and Kirby's hardware shop. The Fabric Department, located on the upper levels of the shop, was situated next to Birds and Gold Fish. As well as dedicated fabric departments in department stores, at this time, haberdashery shops still featured in many Sydney suburban retail areas. However, I do not recall shops dedicated to quilting fabrics or materials.
To my knowledge, the revival of quilting as a 'craft' had not yet begun. I could find no one to teach me. I believe I rang the Embroiderers' Guild to enquire and was told that they knew of no one who was teaching patchwork. As I could not find a teacher, I borrowed a book from the public library. The book taught the English Piecing Method, requiring templates.
There were no pre-cut templates or template plastic, so I made the master from cardboard, which my husband had ruled up. I used company reports for the remainder of the papers. After I had finished piecing the top, I then discovered that 'batting' was an unknown quantity. So I skipped that bit and looked for a suitable backing. I used a polyester backing material, which was already machine quilted. By this time, the baby was due and I had returned the book to the library. Not remembering the instruction for quilting, and being too big and too vague to waddle up to the library again, I made a binding/border of sorts from the printed fabric. I used ordinary cotton thread to hand sew the pieces.
The baby quilt is well-travelled (NZ and USA) and well used (dolly's pram, tent, picnic blanket). The 36 inch square quilt has had many washings, and some of the stitching has come undone but otherwise remains in fairly good condition."
[Cecelia Clarke 15.12.2000]