SOLD Boutis Patterns * £12 €23 $65 Shipping Included (New Zealand & Australia $70)

This pristine board folder contains around a dozen large patterns for working French boutis. This is the beautiful quilting you will see on Provencal quilts. Unlike regular quilting which stitches together filling between two fabrics, boutis begins with the stitching of two fabrics together using the intricate patterns. Then the filling is introduced by pulling thick cotton threads through the stitched channels with a needle. It is a lovely way and satisfying way to quilt.

The origins of boutis can be traced back at least as far as the famous Tristram quilt, a section of which is in the V&A museum in London. The folder also contains a booklet in French describing the symbols traditionally used in the designs. Boutis was used to create the lovely and very functional padded skirts of the ladies of Arles - there is nothing like the freezing Mistral blasting down the Rhone valley to have you layering on quilted undies!

I suppose the advantage of working this way is that all the stuffing both in weight and cost is introduced gradually, making the work far more manageable in the hands while spreading the cost over the period of working.

Above you can see a small illustrated catalogue of the designs included in this pack. Below I have fanned out some of the pattern sheets on the scanner, so you can have an idea of the large scale of them - they will not require you to scale up, but are ready for tracing right away.