In this series I’m exploring textile making and the many complex meanings around textile making practice. This episode is the first of a two-parter with quilt maker and historian Deb McGuire, because we had so much to talk about that we made two episodes! There’s such a lot of overlap in our interests that its not surprising that we talked for ages! We talk about her work in quilting in a frame, her research and lots about the emotions of sewing and working with others.
Deb McGuire (she/her) is a doctoral candidate, researching her thesis “Emotional Journeys: The British Quilt in Space and Time, 1770–1939” at London College of Fashion and co-director of the research and heritage project Within The Frame with Dr Jess Bailey. McGuire’s research explores histories of emotion, memory and inheritance through the material culture and practices of domestic quilt making. Her recent research into the quilters of the North Country has been published in the journal Quilt Studies and forms a chapter of Inheriting the Family: Objects, Identities and Emotions edited by Katie Barclay et al., published by Bloomsbury in March 2025. She is a creative maker, melding academic history with recreative methods to inform both her research and her creative practice. She is an advisor to the accredited The Quilt Collection, York; writes a regular column for The Quilter magazine; and is a vernacular hand quilter, working at her Victorian, Welsh quilt frame.
Within the Frame are working with Heritage Crafts, leading the advocacy for the traditional skill of “Hand Quilting in a Frame with Rocking Stitch.” In Spring 2025, we achieved our goal of having the art form added to the Heritage Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts. Securing this tradition a place on the Red List will help preserve the art form and craft into the next generation.
Heritage Crafts are the national charity for the protection, preservation and continuation of traditional craft practices. Working in partnership with government and key agencies, they provide a focus for craftspeople, groups, societies and guilds, as well as individuals who care about the loss of traditional crafts skills, and work towards a healthy and sustainable framework for the future. The work of Within the Frame has seen the return of quilt frame making in Britain again for the first time since the 1970s so that makers can buy the crucial tools of frame hand quilting again, and we now lead the work to fund the reskilling of teachers and practitioners in this practice, in the places where quilt making was vernacular.
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A weekend of events exploring creativity, curiosity and care in the Leicestershire countryside. Free entry.
Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 July 10am-4pm
Ruth Singer 
Let me know what you think