The 1718 Coverlet

Quilters will be delighted with this book about the earliest dated piece of British patchwork – the 1718 coverlet – currently owned by the Quilters' Guild. It features a comprehensive block directory of every block on the coverlet alongside instructions, traditional and modern, for how to recreate each block. Readers will learn about the discovery of the coverlet and how a replica was painstakingly reproduced using the original techniques.

The 1718 coverlet is the earliest known British patchwork that has a date worked into the piece and as such can be used as a benchmark against which all other rare survivors of early eighteenth-century patchwork can be compared. It was purchased from the Browns of Aldbourne, Wiltshire; a gentry farming family, which has been established in north Wiltshire since the seventeenth century.

The coverlet was made using the Mosaic patchwork technique – a time-consuming method requiring the use of paper for templates. Some of the paper templates still remain in the coverlet and provide tantalising glimpses of printed and hand written text including bills, letters and printed text as well as hand drawn designs for the quilt. Almost all the fabrics are dress fabrics, the majority of which show signs of previous use. There are over 120 different fabrics used and the oldest has been identified as being from the 1640s. The coverlet itself is being exhibited at the Quilt Museum in York at an exhibition to coincide with the publication of the book.