A Display Quilt Built to Last…

My grandmother is very excited for me to inherit her old sewing machines when upgrades soon. So excited in fact, that for my birthday she send me a machine quilting textbook. I know; that’s a weird gift for a twenty-something-year-old but hey, inspiration struck and I am now armed with knowledge and excited to try quilting. The chapter about the history and different varieties of quilts especially peaked my interest.

Quilting is making a tangible, colorful, and heartfelt piece of art. However, when you display quilts, it creates a disconnect from what most people associate as the proper use of a quilt. That is, it takes blanket fort potential and makes it purely decorative. Similar to framing a handkerchief, all that is left is sentiment, or the design and the visuals speaking to you. This is the tradition of an album quilt, that of being mostly a display piece to showcase different life events through each block of the quilt. Using floral motif and symbolism (not literal representation), the great milestones of life were remembered in each square as a quilt was crafted and then displayed.

For the garden of a nursing home, the colorful acrylic and solid metal of this installation are a more appropriate medium, but still hold the sentiment of an album quilt. In each of the panes of the Album Quilt Window installation, a floral motif of a plant native to the South Carolina area is represented. I hope in viewing these familiar silhouettes in such joyful and uplifting colors, the residents of the nursing home are able to start a dialogue, in the same way that an album quilt would create a space for memories to be recalled and shared.