Edina's Roses

This quilt came home with me yesterday after the meeting of Thistle Quilters. It had been part of Thistle's stand at the quilt show in Glasgow earlier this month. The quilt was the result of a challenge to make a quilt sized 18 x 24" on the theme of "Auld Reekie", a name by which Edinburgh is also known.

After some research I discovered that one of the reasons that this is the case, was the habit of domestic servants in the past, to empty the chamberpots from the top of tenement houses into the streets below with very unpleasant results, specially for the innocent passers-by below!

I found a poem written by Robert Fergusson in 1773 which contains the following lines:

"They kindly shower Edina's roses

to quicken and regale our noses"

This refers to that habit of emptying those chamberpots of their foul smelling content.

I grabbed that poetic image of roses to use in my quilt and thus was forced to buy a chamberpot on Ebay, a first for quilt supplies!

The background is a paper/fabric collage using vintage images of Edinburgh from books and an old newspaper, collaged on a calico (muslin in US speak) background using matte medium. The frame is hand drawn and cut from a rose fabric, and then machine appliquéd on using Bondaweb, with machine done double buttonhole stitch. It is embellished with size 11 seed beads.

The chamberpot is a photograph taken from that Ebay buy printed onto fabric and machine appliqued on. I then stitched on a selection of diferent rose buttons and beads, falling down in a steady stream over the background.