We visited one of the 'behind the scenes' buildings at Beamish where one of the archivists showed us some old and valuable quilts.
They were very special because not only were they of outstanding quality but these North East quilts featured designs of flowers which could only be found in America.

So, how did these patterns get to appear in quilts made in the North East over 100 years ago?

We will be finding out!

We looked closely at the different patterns and tried sketching our favourite parts.

How many repeated patterns can you see?

We created our own repeating pattern by drawing around a stencil and then rotating it.

Karen Clough helped us with the tricky parts.

Finally we were allowed to handle some less valuable quilts that were still very old. We could not believe how much care, detail and hard work went into them. They were really beautiful, even the plainly coloured ones.