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THE BEDTIME QUILT

With its procession of night-clad children will be excellent “company” for a tot, to whom a story may be told of the birds that sleep in the little trees while the friendly stars keep watch

Closely related to patchwork, but not as commonly used, is “inlay.” In the making of this style of decoration one material is not laid on to another, but into it. It is the fitting together of small sections of any desired fabric in a prearranged design. For convenience, all the pieces are placed upon a foundation of sufficient firmness, but which does not appear when the work is finished. Ornamental stitches conceal the seams where the edges meet, and it is especially adapted for making heraldic devices. During the Renaissance it was much used by both Spaniards and Italians, who learned the art from the Moors.

An example of quilting, attributed to the Island of Sicily about the year 1400, is described as being a ground of buff-coloured linen. The raised effect is obtained by an interpadding of wool, and the designs are outlined in brown thread. This entire coverlet is embroidered with scenes from the life of Tristan, who frequently engaged in battle against King Langair, the oppressor of his country. This bit of quilting hangs in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Another hanging of the fourteenth century, belonging to the same collection, shows a spirited naval battle between galleys. A striking peculiarity of this hanging is that floral designs are scattered in great profusion among the boats of the combatants.

A patchwork made by the application of bits of leather to velvet was extensively used in some European countries during the Middle Ages. As leather did not fray and needed no sewing over at the edge, but only sewing down, stitching well within the edge gave the effect of a double outline. This combination of leather and velvet was introduced from Morocco. A wonderful tent of this leather patchwork, belonging to the French king, François I, was taken by the Spanish at the battle of Pavia (1525), and is still preserved in the armoury at Madrid.

Some of the very finest specimens of the quilting of the Middle Ages have been preserved for us in Persia. Here the art, borrowed at a very early period from the Arabs, was developed in an unusual and typically oriental manner. Prayer rugs, carpets, and draperies of linen, silk, and satin were among the products of the Persian quilters.

We are indebted to Mr. Alan S. Cole for the following description of a seventeenth-century Persian quilted bath carpet, now preserved at the South Kensington Museum in London. “This typical Persian embroidery is a linen prayer or bath carpet, the bordering or outer design of which partly takes the shape of the favourite Persian architectural niche filled in with such delicate scrolling stem ornament as is so lavishly used in that monument of sixteenth-century Mohammedan art, the Taj Mahal at Agra. In the centre of the carpet beneath the niche form is a thickly blossoming shrub, laid out on a strictly geometric or formal plan, but nevertheless depicted with a fairly close approach to the actual appearance of bunches of blossoms and of leaves in nature. But the regular and corresponding curves of the stems, and the ordered recurrence of the blossom bunches, give greater importance to ornamental character than to any intention of giving a picture of a tree. Similar stems, blossoms, and leaves are still more formally and ornamentally adapted in the border of the carpet, and to fill in the space between the border and the niche shape. The embroidery is of chain stitch with white, yellow, green, and red silks. But before this embroidery was taken in hand the whole of the linen was minutely stitched.”

Worthy of mention is a patchwork panel made in Resht, Persia, in the eighteenth century: “The foundation ground is of ivory coloured cloth, and applied to it, almost entirely covering the ivory background, are designs cut from crimson, cinnamon, pink, black, turquoise, and sapphire coloured cloths, all richly embroidered in marigold and green silk.”

The following is a quilt anecdote, typically oriental, which contains a bit of true philosophy. It seems that the hero, Nass-ed-Din Hodja, was a Turkish person who became chief jester to the terrible Tamerlane during his invasion of Asia Minor. He was also the hero, real or imaginary, of many other stories which originated during the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. His tomb is still shown at Akshekir. The story is given entire as it appeared in “Turkey of the Ottoman” by L. M. Garnett: