Conserving a crazy patchwork quilt

One hundred and thirty-one years ago, sisters Constance and May Bright designed and constructed a quilt in Iutruwita/Tasmania that would one day become part of the National Gallery Collection. The Bright sisters’ Quilt measures approximately 152 by 151.5 centimetres and was made using crazy patchwork technique. Crazy patchwork does not follow a pattern of repeating design but instead uses randomly shaped and positioned fabric pieces to create a unique geometric design. Patchworks made in this style generally have heavily embellished seams and often feature embroidered motifs.

The quilt is made up of nine separate patchwork blocks created from 266 fabric pieces that range from lustrous silk brocades and sumptuous velvets to moiré grosgrain ribbons. The seams of each fabric piece have been embellished with various hand embroidery stitches such as feather, blanket and herringbone in light-yellow cotton, chenille and metallic threads. Some fabric pieces have been further decorated with French knots and embroidered flowers, birds, fruits and leaves. Other motifs include a spiderweb, sun and the letter ‘B’, along with reference to the quilt’s year of creation, ‘1893’, in the bottom right-hand corner. Each block has a green cotton border that was attached with machine stitching. The quilt has been lined with the same green cotton, sandwiching a cotton batting layer between the front and back. These layers have been machine stitched together in several areas.

Textiles at the Gallery are assessed before display to ensure they are structurally sound and that their aesthetic condition reflects the artist’s intent when the work of art was made. When examining the quilt, conservators identified several areas of loss that needed to be addressed before the artwork could be displayed. Many of the fabric pieces were fine-weave satin silks. These fabrics are often woven using a fine silk warp and weft or a fine silk weft and cotton warp. These delicate silk fabrics often do not stand the test of time and can catastrophically degrade as they age. In the case of the Bright sisters’ Quilt, many of the silk satin fabrics had disintegrated leaving behind areas of exposed cotton wefts or near complete loss in the case of the pure silk fabrics. This meant that the internal cotton batting was exposed in some areas. Other, often darker, neighbouring fabrics were also exposed due to the pieced nature of the crazy patchwork construction.

The areas of loss were visually disruptive and the remaining fragments on areas of partial loss were also susceptible to further damage from movement during handling and display. Conservation treatment on 20 areas of the quilt were undertaken to support the remaining fragments and infill areas of loss.

A goal of conservation treatment is for a repaired area to blend into its surroundings while still being distinguishable from the original material on close examination. One of the challenges with infilling the areas of loss was sourcing fabrics that were sympathetic in texture and colour to the original material. Luckily, some of the fabric pieces that required treatment were repeated throughout the quilt so only 15 types of replacement fabric were required. The new fabrics were dyed in the Gallery’s conservation area using Lanaset® dyes. Many rounds of dyeing were required to obtain the correct colour matches. The infill fabrics were then cut to size and placed under the original realigned fragments before being secured into place with a combination of conservation adhesives and stitching.

After 4 months of treatment the conserved areas provide important structural support while subtly blending with the areas of loss, allowing the Bright sisters' Quilt to be viewed and enjoyed the way the Bright sisters originally intended.

Quilt is currently on display in A Century of Quilts in Gallery 26 until 25 August 2024.