Heather, curator at the York Quilt Museum, explained that the collection is not just quilts and patchwork. Any fabric item made from two layers of fabric enclosing a third layer can be described as quilted, and that third layer can be anything from padding to wool or string. So the collection holds many items of clothing as well as household textiles. It spans three centuries, and Heather shared some of her favourite pieces: an 18th-century silk quilted petticoat, a pair of silk quilted boots, a baby’s bonnet, a Turkey red petticoat, and a recent acquisition, a black silk mourning bonnet. A more modern piece is a crazy-patchwork jacket in velvets with embroidery over the top, which belonged to Winifred Childs and was rescued from a child’s dressing-up box just before being thrown out. Volunteers and staff research the quilts and coverlets in detail to date them correctly. One quilt, from Aida Denton, comes with notes on every hexagon: where it came from and what it was originally made as. Heather was happy to take questions, and was interested in the definition of a ‘nail’ of cloth.

Anna began with Tobias Smollett’s descriptions of the fashions arriving in London from Paris in the second half of the 18th century. Sons of wealthy families began their Grand Tour by buying Paris fashions, as seen in many of Bunbury’s caricatures, and could easily spend a year’s wages on clothes. Smollett loved to criticise French dress and its cost, yet he too paid ridiculous prices for his own shirts, and his wife was well attended to on many a shopping trip. One of the most outstanding features of 18th-century dress was the wig, which grew in size through the century and was not confined to women. Smollett observed that a man would more readily part with his religion than his wig. Back in England, the young men in their Paris fashions met at a London club, free from ridicule. They were called the Macaronis. Anna concluded that the 18th century, like no other, took the art of fashion to increasingly absurd extremes.