A Traveller in Time

Something that myself, Kate W. Aimson, and Fenny Bentley have in common is patchwork:

A patchwork picture by me

We all work in English paper-pieced patchwork.  Here is me trying to find an explanation for the appeal of it:
Childhood quilt memories shape my work now.  Quilts I looked at and touched.  Quilts in storybooks and fairy tale pictures.  And my dearest love: quilts in Alison Uttley's books.  In "A Traveller in time" the patchwork quilt is a traveller in time itself - the fabrics, the papers are all part of the history of the family and the farm.  The family of a Derbyshire farm: people, animals, fields, rivers, trees, the house and its contents all belong together and are sufficient in themselves.  If anything is needed it is made - useful objects and folk art - so intertwined who can define the difference?  A rake, a stool, a quilt; all belong.  All live their lives, carry on their existence without the benefit of outside approval.  A quilt can be art or it can keep the sleeper warm.  It can be for best or utilitarian.  The bed smells of lavender and woodruff; the window is open, a bird is singing.  The quilt is part of the present.  The quilt is part of the old people, the ancestors.  All live together - past and present - house and land- people and animals.  A quilt always contains the people who made it and the times in which all of its constituent parts had life.  Wedding dresses, mourning dresses, thunderstorms, terrible years, glorious summers, all are in the quilt.  All the life of the household captured and contained, to travel on into the future.

My childhood copy of the book

Kate W. Aimson was interested in patchwork both as a needlework scholar and ethnologist, but also in her role as a psychic collector.  The patchwork quilt with its psychic residues is ideal working material for her.  Fenny Bentley uses patchwork in her doffs, which she uses to tie herself into the world of Fleams, and be one with it.



Early Spring in Fleams