Saint Blaise.

We had an outing to The Scottish Quilt Exhibition at Inglistone where this brightly coloured piece, in homage to Saint Blaise, attracted my attention - mainly because there is a folly known as Blaise Castle in my home town of Bristol. Blaise was an Armenian physician curing bodily afflictions before turning to curing spiritual ones; he was martyred in the year 316 by being beaten and disemboweled with a wool carder before being beheaded (I do hope you’re not eating your tea). His life is recorded in the “Acts of Saint Blaise” written 400 years after his death and so probably contains a few minor errors. He became very popular in the middle ages (a thousand years after his death) and is still venerated in Cornwall. While being led to his place of incarceration shortly before the execution, he cured a young lad who had a fishbone stuck in his throat; the grateful mother of the child provided him with food and candles for the duration of his stay. As a consequence of all this, Blaise is the patron saint of both wool carders and throats.

 
The extra is a detail of the beautifully quilted Cassiopeia.