The Heritage Hub 4 Mid Wales organised the Laura Ashley Heritage Quilt exhibition to remind us of Laura's aspiration of producing small printed textile designs for patchwork. Which was a fond memory and tradition of her Welsh family roots of making patchwork quilts.

Brian Jones was a young self-taught artist from Newtown, Powys and was taken on by Laura in 1972 to translate her visionary ideas onto cotton fabrics and wallpapers initially. Then many product ideas evolved from her original beginnings of printing tea towels and head scarves when Laura hand was sewing and making finished products and Bernard made had made a small square screen printing press to print neck and head scarves like Audrey Hepburn wore in the film Roman Holiday.

As textile designs were created in a small design studio in Carno Railway Station, Brian loved taken home some examples of his hand painted designs which had literally come of the printing press. Brian's mother then started to sew these samples of fabric into family quilts. One of which was made for Brian's own bed. Now decades later, demonstrating the timeline of the garment fabric prints from the 1970s to the 1980s which were displayed in the Laura Ashley Heritage Quilt exhibition in Newtown Library for the month of March 2023.

Also on display was correspondence between Laura Ashley and Brian what seemed a lifetime of joy and fulfilment for Brian, as well as a dream and privilege of working with Mrs Ashley.

There were many other quilts on display with a special commissioned tribute quilt in memory of Laura Ashley legacy from the communities of Mid Wales. The founder of the Heritage Hub 4 Mid Wales Ann Evans a past Laura Ashley employee together with previous Laura Ashley textile designer Brian Jones discussed ideas of a unique quilt portrait of Laura Ashley. By chance they came across a self-taught British quilter Devida Bushrod who creates unique pixelated picture quilts.

Ann contacted Devida in the New Year and she immediately took up the challenge to make this unique quilt especially for the Laura Ashley 70th Anniversary exhibition in Newtown on Women's International Day. This quilt had taken 60 hours of work and was made from 1,500 pieces of fabric and 13 colours of fabric. Devida lives in Tulsa Oklahoma but was determined to complete this significant project on time with very little notice.

Nick Ashley letter to the Dream Team of Mid Wales. Nick had said his mother used to freely admit and was filmed stating she owed her success to the people of Mid Wales. There was not an awful lot of paid jobs for women back in the 60s and women were flocking to Carno to join the friendly atmosphere of working hours which were dictated by my mother who would leave work in time to pick up my siblings from school.

There was outworking from home with sewing machines provided and cut fabrics delivered and collected daily which was a winning formula for women with families and duties on their family farms. This two-way trust and respect was the very foundation of a working community. There is a deep tradition of this communal spirit in Mid Wales that continues to this day.

Bernard Ashley said at the 40th Anniversary of Laura Ashley business, when I started printing textiles in the 1950s with Laura I had no idea where our business was going to go. 'From the very beginning I was fascinated with textile printing and dyeing and quickly became involved in the processes and building of primitive printing machines to produce textiles and eventually wallpapers.

We had no capital to buy industrial printing machines and we certainly did not have have the space to put them so we improvised. We began in the city of London but we both yearned for the countryside. It was here in the Welsh valleys of Montgomeryshire where there was the rich natural lifestyle we loved and settled first in the market town of Machynlleth where we had our first workshop and family home. As we expanded rapidly in 1966 we searched for more space to grow and we happened to find a little village called Carno in Montgomeryshire Powys Mid Wales.

This exhibition explained the Welsh roots of this global phenomenon. More exhibitions and events will follow please check out the latest news.