Strippy quilts have been around for a long time and are essentially wide(ish) long strips of fabric joined lengthwise to make a quilt top, in other words they were quick and easy to make. They could also be quilted easily in a quilt frame – just start at one end of the strip nearest to you, quilt to the end, wind the quilt on to the next strip and repeat. Quilters who wished to show off their prowess could (and did) quilt different patterns in the strips – often one pattern in the darker strips and another in the lighter strips with perhaps a very complicated design in the centre strip.
Here in the UK strippy quilts were usually made from strips of fabric as described above – sometimes those strips were patched and there were several strips of different fabrics such as this one from the Hannah Hauxwell collection
and sometimes they were long strips of just two alternating fabrics such as this one from Barbara Chainey’s collection.
In America strippy quilts were often strips of blocks or units alternating with plain fabric strips – this one from Barbara Chainey’s collection is an example and she thinks a likely date of 1880s could be attributed from the fabrics included. You can buy the pattern to make your own version of this quilt here. The quilting design in this quilt is also very simple – the focus is on the patchwork.
Being a patchworker rather than a quilter I prefer to make my strippy quilts with strips of blocks (or units) rather than attempt to show off my quilting on plain strips. However, there are still those strips between the blocks and they need to be quilted. If you use a busy print instead of a plain fabric though, no one will be able to see how wonky your stitches are or whether you have followed the design accurately – all you can see is texture. Not only that but you don’t have to do anything complicated in the way of quilting either as you can see in the photos below.
The pattern for this last quilt first appeared in Patchwork and Quilting’s special publication Inspirational Strippy Quilts, 2011 and you can find patterns for both these quilts in my Payhip shop.
These days when talking about strip quilts we usually think of those tempting pre-cut rolls of strips that have been turned into a quilt top and the internet (and book shops) are awash with patterns for making such quilts and the original ‘strippy’ quilts seem to have been forgotten. If you enjoy quilting perhaps you would care to accept the challenge to make a modern strippy quilt – by hand or machine – using wide strips of fabric instead of the pre-cuts.
If you want to do more research on strippy quilts both ancient and modern you can do your own internet searching or alternatively I did an article for Wandering the Web in the July issue of British Patchwork & Quilting magazine this year highlighting some of the many websites featuring these quilts.
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