A QUILT made by the Brontë sisters has gone on display at their home in Haworth.

Visitors to the Brontë Parsonage Museum can see the hand-sewn patchwork quilt until December 6.

The museum’s collections team today arranged the quilt on the bed used by the writers’ father, the Rev Patrick Brontë.

The quilt, which is on display for the first time since the 1980s, measures 187cm by 214cm and consists of silks, taffetas, velvets and cotton which may have been taken from old Brontë dresses.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne, who wrote famous novels such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, worked on the quilt with their Aunt Branwell.

The quilt is unfinished and was passed on to the family of Martha Brown, the Brontë family's servant. The Brontë Society, which runs the Brontë Parsonage Museum, bought the quilt in 1924.

A Brontë Society spokesman said: “The quilt has been hand-sewn and the stitches are neat and even.

“In some places, the quilt has faded and it is possible to see backing papers, such as newspaper, which was common practice in quilt-making at the time.

"The Brontës also appear to have used fragments of old letters as paper templates.

“The quilt is rarely displayed due to its fragile nature.”