V&A Museum London Quilt Exhib. 1710-2010

I spent yesterday in London at the V&A (what a magnificent building that it - inside and out - awesome!). The exhibition was brilliant. It is wonderful to see those old quilts - thousands of pieces sewn with such care and enjoyment. I loved the whole cloth quilts too - stitched by hand in all sorts of intricate patterns. There used to be guys who went from village to village marking huge pieces of fabric ready for the women to sandwich and stitch. Imagine anyone having that job today! At the exhibition we saw the Changhi quilt which was stitched by a group of girl guides (Girl Scouts in America I believe) from England who were imprisoned there in the second world war, from bits of fabric that had been begged, stolen or borrowed! Some of the girls had embroidered their names on the centre hexagon - very poignant. There was also a quilt made by the guys in Wandsworth Prison, London in 2009/10. That was an interesting piece too. Each guy had sewn a square and had stitched pictures and words on it. There was also a huge quilt top from Australia which had been stitched by women on the HMS Rajah as they were banished to Botany Bay for some crime (usually very small) or other. A charity formed by Elizabeth Fry in the UK had given them thousands of pieces of cloth, needles, thread etc for the journey and what they came up with was amazing. There were many other quilts, all very well displayed. One of the things that struck me was that they were all QUILTED quite densely - no huge sqaures of non quilted fabric which you see in so many quilts in shows here. It was such an enjoyable day and I wish you could all have seen it.
Dorothy