Broderie Perse

This quilt is one of three quilts made by Bettye Kimbrell using a technique called broderie perse, meaning Persian embroidery.  It  involves cutting floral designs out of chintz material and reassembling them into a different pattern on a quilt top.  Bettye said, “I took a piece of chintz fabric, noted the clusters of flowers on it that I wanted to use in my quilt and did a rough cut around them. To attach them to my quilt top I cut away—a half inch at a time—all the background fabric from the chintz design. I appliquéd that half-inch to the top using a button-hole stitch around the edge of each leaf, stem and flower in the design, then trimmed away another half inch of the chintz and stitched it to the piece. I kept cutting and stitching a half-inch at a time until I had a quilt top full of chintz flowers arranged the way I wanted them. It was tedious and really difficult to do. It took me five years, with R&R breaks, to finish it.”

34” W X46”L (1989)

Detail showing how designs on chintz were trimmed away from their background and applied to quilt top with a button hole stitch. Note that the entire white background is stippled.

Detail of center figure of Broderie Perse quilt