Trafalgar Quilt

 
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Today is the 209th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The famous signal, sent by Admiral Lord Nelson before the battle, “England expects that every man will do his duty” is portrayed here. The black strips are not flag poles but act to separate the different sections of the codes from one another.

I pieced this quilt in the mid-1990s, and then it was mislaid for almost ten years in my myriad of  knitting, spinning, needlework, and over one hundred other quilts of various sizes and in various stages of production. I found it again, sometime in 2004, and planned to back and quilt it in that year in preparation for the 200^th anniversary party of the Battle of Trafalgar that I was planning for October, 2005. Serious family illness, round the clock nursing, and death intervened, however, in 2005, and the party was cancelled, and the quilt, once again, was consigned to the WIP stack. This year, during a similar family situation, I worked on the quilt but now it is finally finished.

The quilt is made of 100% cotton fabrics, the batting/wadding is Warm & Natural cotton, and it is entirely hand pieced and hand quilted.  Drawing my own patterns, I used the foundation piecing method for some of the trickier signals and double-basted/tacked them to hold them in place.

The pins are part of the basting/tacking stage, to be added, in preparation for the quilting. Needless to say, I had far more thread to rip out at the end than usual.

The signals are not quilted – only the sashing and outer borders. There is no quilting pattern, just a series of lines in an abstract homage to a ship’s rigging.

The quilt measures 62” x 52”, and the signal blocks are 4” x 6”.

*http://www.wikihow.com/Foundation-Piece-a-Quilt-Block