Anne Williams chats to Welsh quilter Mary Jenkins about her quilting life
designer profile
Mary Jenkins fondly recalls sleeping underneath a patchwork bedcover as a child growing up in Pembrokeshire, so she supposes she always had some awareness of quilts. But, until her thirties, it was embroidery that interested her. When Mary took up quilting in the late 1970s, there were limited resources for beginners. She says, “There were very few magazines and tutors, so I taught myself using books. But in 1979, The Quilters’ Guild formed – which I joined early on – and things began to change.”
The resurgence of interest in quilting in the UK was in part a result of a nostalgic interest in handicrafts generated by the American Bicentennial in 1976. “I’m ashamed to say that it was American block patterns that excited us back then, with British quilt-making traditions largely overlooked. Later, The Art and Technique of Creating Medallion Quilts by Jinny Beyer [an American quilt designer, teacher and author] became my bible for a while,” Mary tells us. Medallion quilts comprise a central unit surrounded by a series of borders, and many were made in the States up to the mid-1800s. But they were a hugely popular style in Britain long before that, where they are usually called frame quilts. Perhaps Mary’s fondness for American medallions was a foretelling of her future preoccupation with historic quilts from this side of the Atlantic.
HOME-GROWN INSPIRATIONS
Following a break from patchwork and quilting to concentrate on embroidery, Mary returned to it around the millennium. “It was as if my eyes had been opened and I realised how fabulous early British quilts are. I was captivated by Welsh quilts and decided to learn about them and to make versions in my own way,” she remarks.
Many styles of quilts were made in Wales, but it’s the quilting that makes them discernibly Welsh. An archetypal Welsh quilting layout, regardless of the pattern of the quilt top, is a central medallion surrounded by borders of smaller motifs, predominantly circular-based shapes such as spirals, hearts, leaves and paisley pears, intensely stitched with designs developing as the quilting goes along. Mary says, “I love the variety, uniqueness and organic qualities of Welsh quilts. The bold and graphic woollen quilts have an instant impact, but the nineteenth-century multi-fabric patchworks
