Bird's Nest: Panel #30:

Quilt by Elizabeth Norman of Lowick, Northumberland, England.

First quarter 19th century.
They date this now as 1820-1829, outer border perhaps added about 1850.

Collection of the Bowes Museum

http://bowes.adlibhosting.com/Details/collect/214

The panel at the center of this frame quilt is famous as the same one that the Austen family used for their quilt about the same time (#28), but this post is about the smaller panel,  #30.

The oval panel features a nest in a fanciful rose tree. A colorful bird feeds a worm to nestlings, a scene framed with a ring of lozenge shapes and corner bouquets. The borders on the Bowes Museum quilt were probably cut from yardage showing how the panels were printed as repeat images with a small white space between each oval.

The Quilters' Guild of Britain has an uncut panel in the collection.

Maciver Percival published a panel in The Chintz Book in 1923 with the caption: "Rectangular Panel, Indian Colouring."

"Two most interesting panels of a kind which were very popular in the Sheraton period, being used for applying to plain material for bed furniture and for ornamenting chairs and other seats...The delightful rectangular panel is in the rich indigo and madder colours copied from Indian cottons..."

We see it as an oval panel. Percival dates it to about 1812 and we'd guess a little later. The Sheraton period, when furniture designed by Thomas Sheraton was fashionable, is loosely described as 1785-1820 or more narrowly 1790-1810.

The Sidmouth Quilt with the bird panel in the center.

Collection of the Quilters' Guild of Britain

http://www.quiltmuseum.org.uk/collections/heritage/sidmouth-quilt.html 

Like the George III Jubilee panel Percival pairs with it, the Bird's Nest panel seems to have been used only by quiltmakers in the British Isles. We've yet to find a quilt we think was made in America.

The field of patchwork and frames surrounding the panel are

more typically seen in British panel quilts than in American.

Unknown source

Four of the smaller Panel #30 framing Panel #36 in a combination

strippy/frame quilt.

Again the field of patchwork (and particularly the Austen-like diamonds)

mark this quilt as British. The larger panel in the center is #36.

Mary Lloyd of Cardigan, Wales

Collection of the National Museum of Wales, about 1840

Mary Lloyd framed her center panel with cutout chintz

and a field of squares.

https://museum.wales/articles/2009-04-17/The-Quilt-Collection/

The quilt is stained in the center but the panel background

looks to have been white.

We saw this checkerboard medallion on eBay, and we are guessing it's British due to the style.

Notice the panel has a tan ground.

Decades ago the little quilt magazine Nimble Needle Treasures

published a photo of a tied comforter found in the Hollenberg Pony Express Station

in Marysville, Kansas. It certainly looks English 

to us despite its home in an 1870s Kansas building.

Nancy Hornback sent Merikay photos.

Reporter Letha Rice recorded the story she heard. The quilt was donated by Letha's cousin Lydia Flin Warren of Home, Kansas (Marshall County--near Marysville) who inherited the quilt from their grandfather William Clark Huxtable, born in Devonshire, England. He decided to immigrate to Australia, so the family story goes, but after his ship was disabled he was rescued by a ship bound for America. 

The quilt is quite colorful with several blue ground 

and madder red chintzes.

The last pieced border is very English, chintz squares.

Years after he wound up in Kansas his sisters in England sent him this quilt top made by his mother.

William & wife are buried in Marshall County, Kansas.

A little detective work indicates he lived in Genessee, New York 

where he married Maria. His mother who made the quilt may have been Elizabeth

Clark. No father is listed on his birth certificate.

Letha described the quilt top: "Made as many English pieced quilts were, with a center panel framed by pieced strips, row on row with more 'picture patterns' cut from the chintz and placed as corner blocks."

Those "picture patterns" look to be panels (Panel #37.)

What Can We Learn From Panel #30?

By looking at the quilts made from the panels we can speculate that the Bird's Nest panel was printed in England and not exported to the U.S. market. We have no date-inscribed examples but guess the quilts to date from the 1820s and '30s. 

Americans have their chance to buy this panel today. The Quilters' Guild shop offers a more rounded version than the original.

https://www.quiltersguildshop.org.uk/products/vintage-chintz-fabric-panel

Susan Briscoe used their panel to create a reproduction of the Sidmouth Quilt in 2016.

Read more here:

http://www.todaysquilter.com/magazine/behind-the-quilt-the-sidmouth-quilt-heritage-quilts/