Heritage Crafts X JW Anderson Bursary 2026
Within The Frame helped facilitate a bursary for the preservation of the rocking stitch in a frame funded by JW Anderson. This bursary awarded in 2025 sits alongside other opportunities artists and craft practitioners should explore through Heritage Crafts. The specific JW Anderson funding enables a young quilter to work closely with Deb McGuire and other expert hand quilters learning traditional techniques for frame quilting. The bursary also facilitates work with local historic collections in Wales vital to how we understand and preserve the heritage of frame quilting.
Samantha Jones
Samantha Jones is an experienced quilt maker from Cardiff who works on individual and major art commissions.
She was awarded the JW Anderson X Heritage Crafts bursary in 2025 to fund a programme of bespoke training in the endangered craft of quilting in a frame with Deborah McGuire, and advanced hand quilting techniques with Sandie Lush.
While hands on training at the frame is important, so is examining surviving quilt heritage to learn from the past. Thanks to Elen Phillips and Kim Thusing for facilitating this knowledge and access. St Fagans is currently the only museum in the UK displaying a quilt frame and has an extensive collection of archival materials and historic Welsh quilts.
St Fagans Museum Wales
Hands on Training with Deb McGuire, Within the Frame
The rocking stitch in a flat frame is at risk of not being passed to the next generation. After securing this skill a place on the Red List for endangered crafts, the hands on work begins to seed the skill in the next generation of quilters.
Deb McGuire, co-founder of Within The Frame, is a skilled practitioner of the rocking stitch. Through the funding generously made available by JW Anderson, she can take time away from her PhD research to help train the bursary recipient.
