Cathy's Art Diary

Dazzling exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum of quilts made from Kaffe Fassett textiles. The introduction explained how Fassett formed a collection of fabrics for quilting with designers Brandon Mabley and Philip Jacobs and the exhibition then showcased quilts made with those fabrics. The effect in the space was beautiful and it hummed with colour. There was a mix of patchwork and appliqué work ranging from the tradition to works that were more like paintings. The show was full of ladies who were obviously needleworkers having long conversations about technique which at times made it hard to see the exhibits and read the commentaries. As someone who did patchwork in their youth, and has a couple of half-finished quilts, I felt it was slightly cheating to use material designed for quilting. To me it has been about using up scraps.     There was also a lovely display of Fassett’s needlework cushions which reminded me I’d done a couple which I must dig out ...

Moving exhibition at Woolwich Works showing a selection of panels of the AIDS memorial quilt. I’d last seen it laid out on the floor of St Paul’s Cathedral so it was lovely, this time, to see sections hung up and looking so good in the space. This show was organised by METRO Charity, in collaboration with Woolwich Works and the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It was nicely presented with QR codes to take you to some of the stories of the people commemorated. When I went there were a number of people walking quietly around obviously moved by the display. Closes 18 December 2022

Moving online talk from the British Academy looking at a project to study the experiences of war widows which resulted in the making of a quilt. This event took the form of a discussion between various people involved in the project chaired by Sue Pritchard from Royal Museums Greenwich who were the first to show the quilt at the Queen’s House. I live nearby and am so sorry I missed that back in 2019. Nadine Muller from Liverpool John Moores University had initiated the project via an exercise to record the experiences of war widows in oral history interviews as she had found when she came to research the subject that very little had been written about them. During her interviews she realised that some of the women found it difficult to talk and she wondered if some sort of workshop might help them. Lois Blackburn, an artist and co-founder of Arthur-Martha which had worked on similar projects, met Nadine in the village they both lived in and suggested workshops around handcraft a...

Wonderful exhibition at the V&A of British quilts. Where to start really it was all so good! I loved the way a number of quilts were shown on beds so you could see them from many directions. The early quilts were so moving as these are probably the only thing left of the women who made them and yet, on the whole, we don’t know who they were. I hadn’t realised that patchwork began as an upper class hobby as it showed off the lavish material they had access to. It was only with the spread of machine printed cotton that it became a working class occupation. I liked the fact that old and contemporary quilts were shown together so a dialogue began between them. There was a lovely modern one called “Punctuation” based on a letter the artist had found in her mother’s belongings. Favourite quilt was one called the Garden of Eden with super biblical scene such as Jacob’s ladder. The bottom border was small fish and shells. I have to admit I cried at one point! I found the video of the maki...