Monday 5 July 2010

Quilts 1700-2010


This is typical of me! I have just realised I am writing a post about an exhibition the day after it has closed, that will teach me not to procrastinate so much and never plough through that 'to do list'.

Anyway.....
Kandy and I thought we should soak up some culture on our last trip to The Big Smoke (for London zine symposium) so we headed to the V&A to check out the Quilts exhibition.

I have been meaning to get into Quilting for a couple of years now, more so that my love for and skills for hand sewing have grown. This exhibition just got my hands itching to stitch.

I particularly liked the really old quilts, the detail in those things is beyond belief, and the portrayal of stories in so many of them is exactly why I love hand sewing so much. We noticed it was quite easy to spot the ones stitched by females and the ones by males. The male ones being a lot more geometric and Uniform. Some so uniform they were stitched by soldiers using their uniform!!

Wasn't such a big fan of the modern quilts, but I'm not a fan of modern things in general!!! Saying that I was totally engrossed by a modern quilt that was stitched by the inmates of Wandsworth prison. Watching the documentary talking about quilting got me thinking I wanted to teach crafts to cons, I was having a John Waters moment.

Obviously we then went to peruse the gift shop which took a while, we finally settled on a pencil and brooch. I browsed through the books, but decided I'm still not ready to commit to learning how to quilt just yet.

And then we were off, stopping by at Hummingbird before hopping on a train back up norfffff, belly full of cake, mind full of stitching ideas!

4 comments:

Brill said...

I read Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood this year which features quilting- all the different patterns sounded so amazing it made me wish it had colour illustrations; like the way women would use their quilts to show off their skills with more elaborate patterns "A Log Cabin quilt is a thing every young woman should have before marriage, as it means the home; and there is always a red square at the centre, which means the hearth fire."

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Sugar Paperette said...

ohhhh, that dounds good, something I definatley need to add to my reading list!