London Quilters' Exhibition - by Joyce

On Friday (7th July) Jane K and I went to the London Quilters exhibition at Swiss Cottage Library , only 2 mins. walk from the station, on the Jubilee line.

The first quilt you see as you walk up the stairs is a beautiful rainbow butterfly quilt created with lots of familiar patchwork patterns, made for the maker’s son.

As we then walked round the inspiring exhibition the overall impression was how patchwork and quilting had helped people through the pandemic and beyond. “Using my stash” was a frequent comment to use up fabrics and quite a few had used “inches” and hexagons in a multitude of different patterns to use up even small pieces.

Some reflected on their lives eg. using fabrics bought on travels abroad; turning to their garden for inspiration, mushrooms growing there; or flowers created with tiny hexagons appliquéd ; the Dresden plate pattern was used to good effect to create large flowers.

A moving piece was inspired by personal associations with the Foundling Museum.

Lockdown messages had been another inspiration, eg. Rule of Six, The Virus is Raging, Use your judgement, Support Bubbles, and so on.

The group makes Quilts for Care Leavers aged 16/25 much like we make Linus quilts and there was one on display, slightly longer and narrower bearing in mind the size of the recipients.

The Joy of coming out of lockdown was shown on a colourful quilt by a spiral of figures taking flight.

Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe had been partly sustained during her detention in Iran by friends and family sending her fabric which she had turned into clothes for her young daughter. She had also made gifts for fellow prisoners. A cushion cover she had made for her daughter to take back to her new room when she returned to the UK in 2019 was on display, very moving.

We really enjoyed this exhibition and to top it all the Cafe was open so we could have a coffee when we first arrived and later lunch!

The exhibition closes 26th July.

NB there were items for sale.