Quilting has become an increasingly popular practical art. Our grandmothers pieced together scraps of fabric to create beautiful and thrifty bedcoverings. But today, many quilts are now primarily art pieces. Quilting appears on more than just quilts. It is also found on clothing, jackets and handbags.
It might surprise you that the history of quilting goes back 5,000 years, According to Wikipedia, for much of its history quilting was primarily a practical technique to provide the body with protection and insulation.
The oldest surviving example of a quilted piece is a linen carpet found in a Mongolian cave dated to between 100 BC and 200 CE.
We know quilted garments were worn by Chinese soldiers millennia ago because of clay figures found buried in a Chinese emperor’s tomb.
Quilting appears to have been introduced to Europe by Crusaders in the 12th century in the form of the Gambeson, a quilted garment worn under armour, which later developed into the doublet which remained an part of the fashionable men’s clothing for 300 years.
While we often think of quilting as making a bed covering, quilting is actually much more. Quilting is the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together, either through stitching manually, using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialized long-arm quilting system. An array of stitches is passed through all layers of the fabric to create a three dimensional padded surface. The three layers are typically referred to as the top fabric or quilt top batting or insulating material and the backing.
The earliest known quilted garment is depicted on the carved ivory figure of a pharaoh dating from the ancient Egyptian first dynasty.
Quilted fabrics have helped people stay warm for thousands of years. Multiple layers of fabric are stitched together, creating small air pockets between them. These air pockets act as insulators, trapping warm air close to the body and preventing cold air from penetrating.
Quilted fabric was found in China as early as the fifth century. Quilted garments from ancient China were often worn by royalty as a sign of prestige. The earliest examples of quilting in China dates back to the Tang Dynasty. The classic Chinese quilted jacket is sometimes called a Tang suit.
I have enjoyed being part of a quilting project for the past decade. Led by Margaret Ferguson, we have created over 1,000 practical bed coverings which are distributed to shelters in Prince Albert. The ancient art of quilting continues to shelter people from the cold, even in a Saskatchewan winter.
