Averil Colby
(1900-1983)
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English quilter, lecturer, author of Patchwork, Patchwork Quilts and Quilting. Inducted in 1980 at
the Continental Quilting Congress, Arlington, Virginia.
Research Associate: Tina Fenwick Smith
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Averil Colby was the first to be inducted into The Quilters Hall of Fame from the United Kingdom.
Nearing the age of 60, she began her writing career on a subject she so enjoyed. Patchwork,
published in 1958, has been reprinted twelve times. Other books followed: Samplers, 1964;
Patchwork Quilts, 1965; Quilting, 1971, and Pincushions in 1975. Her books are classics and show
the depth of Averil’s research abilities.
Never deemed a quilter per se, she experimented with various sizes of hexagons made in the English
method of fabric-turned over a paper template, basted, then whipped to like a patch. She reported
that her scrapbag of fabrics spanned nearly 200 years.
As chairman of the Handicraft Committee of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, she was
instrumental in organizing courses, classes, and exhibitions of handicrafts that helped reawaken an
interest in quilting in the United Kingdom.
Examples of her work can be found at the American Museum in Britain, Bath, and in the collection of
The Quilter’ Guild of the British Isles.
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