A VISUAL INHERITANCE
Last year, I signed up to the Quilters’ Guild Contemporary Journal Quilt Challenge 2008, to create a 12” x 12” size experimental, documented quilt each month for 12 months. I could use a subject and techniques of my choice. Without hesitation, I chose to make it my way of responding to the BBC programme title question:
“Who do you think you are?”
I would use the challenge as my way of passing down some family stories about people and places in the past that various members of the family, including my husband, have researched as well as a way of passing down the tradition of sampler making and my current skills linked to contemporary textile art. I decided that for each quilt I would write about a family story and the historical sampler context of my chosen design, as well as the requisite notes of the contemporary technical approaches used to express both of these.
For some, a framework is too constraining, but as a scientist I find that some sort of framework gives me much more freedom than a blank sheet of paper or fabric. Also there is nothing like a time framework to limit dithering or perfectionist aspiration! It promotes pragmatism and “necessity is the mother of invention”. Creativity was to be more important than chronology so my family history “cameos” were stitched as they came to mind rather than in time order.
Two World Wars: lest we forget
Moses’ Migration: a link with Letterkenny
Diamond Wedding: till death do us part.
One year on, the challenge is complete. The monthly quilt titles vary from “GRADUATE GRANDPARENTS: Emancipation and Education”, featuring an alphabet sampler using the periodic table, to “A DIAMOND WEDDING: Till Death us do Part”, featuring large scale seventeenth century boxers and “BORN TO CHARLES WALLS: So Many Children”, in the style of a traditional birth sampler but on an historic family fabric, the one surviving sixty year old first size towelling nappy! I was able to use contemporary versions of eighteenth and nineteenth century British Isles and world maps to illustrate past economic migration and current globalisation as it has affected my family. A pattern sampler format gave me scope to explore plaited stitches as a link to straw plaiting forebears. Other sampler genres such as house and garden, darning, memorial, moral and technique based ones provided plenty more scope to visually document family history.
In addition to the designing and stitching, it has been enormous fun both to explore the historical facts and their social context. I have recorded everything on the computor to be digitally saved for the future, as textiles, like us, are only transient! By way of hard copies, I have presented the text, together with the quilt images, in a square book format so I can provide plenty for my future descendents to inherit without dispute.
I will bring a copy of the book to the AGM for members to have a look at.
Liz Holliday(liz.in.stitches@hotmail.co.uk)