Chelsea Physic Garden Small Quilt

This little quilt (8.5x9.5ins) was made to commemorate a trip Lesley made to Chelsea Physic Garden in London last year. This garden was originally opened to train apprentice apothecaries to identify and grow medicinal plants.

The quilt has as its base tea bags which were first used to make tea then dried, emptied of tea leaves and carefully opened out. They were then applied to a piece of painted calico with diluted PVC.

I drew the map showing the location of the garden in London, wrote the name of the benefactor Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) in the top right hand corner and the date of the start of the garden 1673 in the bottom middle. Other stamps were applied to the surface to indicate the use of the garden which was to collect and grow medicinal plants from around the world, something it still does today. In the bottom right corner a rock garden is shown as the garden has the oldest such in Europe. There is also a stamp of a rhino as for some reason this appears on the top of the gate to the garden.

After stamping I coloured some of the images then quilted it using the map of the layout of the gardens as the template.

Chelsea Physic Garden is the second oldest of this type of garden in England and still continues to maintain its collection of rare and medicinal plants from around the world.