I’m sitting in the Leeds art library looking at books about quilting. Outside it is drizzling and getting darker. I can hear the sounds of the Leeds Christmas market. In here I am thinking about quilting.
When I was about 10 years old I helped my mum use my grandmother’s old hand sewing machine to sew up the side of an old quilt to make my first sleeping bag. It was our first shared sewing project. It’s a skill I later passed onto my own daughter. Sew if you can.
It’s a slow business and beautiful. Fabric is fascinating and full of possibilities.
Quilts are a mirror of memory. The fabric itself, the colours, the techniques, the time spent, each evokes a memory or more. To look, to handle, to hold is to bring those memories back to life and make more.
A quilt should be used, either flat or hung, on a bed, a sofa or a wall, a table or chair, a tent or anywhere. Don’t fold up a quilt and hide it away.
Most of all make more quilts. Take small or large scraps and bits of memory and layer them together. Behold, it will make a new thing. Enjoy the feelings. Just sew.
The Silcoates WW1 quilt will be auctioned at the service in Silcoates Chapel on 9th December in aid of St George’s crypt, Leeds. As someone said to me about it on Friday: ‘There’s so much in it’.
In our life and our believing
The love of God