Lucy Boston - Her Life, Her Patchwork, and Her Legacy of Design

War nurse, single mother, painter, home restorationist, gardener, author, music aficionado, and patchwork enthusiast. Lucy Boston was an artist in everything she did.

She left her English studies at the University of Oxford at the beginning of World War I to become a war nurse. After the war ended, she eventually married (and divorced), traveling Europe to study art with her son, Peter.

In 1939, after falling in love with the Manor at Hemingford Grey years before, she bought it for 2,500 GBP. And, at a time when most of the neighbors were modernizing their homes, Lucy caused quite the neighborhood sensation when she restored the oldest inhabited house in the country back to its original Norman design.

And, it's not surprising that Lucy’s love for patchwork began when she bought two patchwork quilts as curtains for the old house. They required a great deal of mending, which sparked her desire to create her own patchwork. The curtains hang in the Manor to this day. 

As integral as patchwork became to Lucy and her home, according to Diana, anyone visiting the Manor would have rarely found Lucy stitching. She would have thought it rude to stitch when entertaining people. But, her patchwork quilts tell the story of a quilter who fell head over heels for English paper piecing, like so many of us have today.

Lucy’s most famous patchwork quilt, known as the Patchwork of the Crosses, is one of about 20 patchwork quilts Lucy made. According to her daughter-in-law, Diana, she created all of the stunning fussy cuts and kaleidoscope designs in her mind's eye before cutting each piece out with scissors.

This quilt has been created and recreated by countless quilters throughout the years, and is one of the top 10 most famous patchwork quilts in the world. It uses the lovely 1” honeycomb to create square shaped blocks, beginning with a cross in the middle of each block and radiating out for an additional 3 rounds.

In Lucy’s original quilt, she surrounded each block with cream colored honeycombs before joining the blocks with a “sashing” of squares. It was a formidable undertaking, but the result is stunning, and it draws quilters from around the world to make the pilgrimage to the Manor at Hemingford Grey every year.

So, when it comes to the Tales of Cloth rendering of this iconic quilt, Lucy’s Terrace honors both the traditional and the modern. It takes Lucy Boston’s block from the Patchwork of the Crosses, increases the size of each shape from 1” to 1 ¼” and sets the blocks on point. Finally, it does away with the large block borders and jumps right to the square sashing. The result is a stunning, timeless quilt that anyone can achieve.