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Transportation

Published: Friday, 2nd October 2020 07:00 AM

Not a usual subject matter for patchwork and quilting I agree, but what’s great about picking different themes is that is allows us to look at the variety and character within our Collections, and explore pieces that don’t always fit the usual quilt history narrative. It’s not quite planes, trains and autmobiles, but there are a few ships, bikes and cars – (doesn’t quite have the same ring to it!)

‘Spaghetti Junction’ was made in 2003 by Pauline Barnes, and is a representation of Junction 6 on the M6. The cotton fabric base has an applied border and embroidery and embellishment create the 'spaghetti junction' roads as seen from an aerial view. The fabrics are hand-dyed with machine stitching, quilting and applique. The vehicles, attached by hand, are wrapped cardboard and painted.

‘Sunny in, Sunny Out’ is a contemporary pictorial quilt with a multi-coloured design showing a mirror image of motorbikes. The quilt is hand-dyed, machine-quilted and appliqued. It was made by Ruth Parker and won second place in The Festival of Quilts Quilters’ Guild Challenge 2007, sponsored and purchased by Bernina. The Quilt featured in the first exhibition ‘Quilts in Time: Journey from Bed to Wall’ at The Quilt Museum and Gallery in 2008.

‘Pink Boat’ is a pictorial contemporary quilt inspired by a boat in Dry Dock awaiting painting, made as the first in a series in 1988 by artist Jo Budd. The quilt is constructed with a backing canvas, overlaid with pieced and collaged procion dyed silk and cotton, and pigment dyed viyella and cotton. The surface has then been further embellished with partial overlays of re-used chiffon scarves and pigment dyed nylon net. Some of the overlaid fabrics have been attached using bondaweb. The quilt has been free machine quilted with two shades of nylon thread - dark and transparent.

This cyclist appears as one of the figures in our ‘Cultural Olympiad Quilt’, celebrating the 2012 London Olympics. It shows nine different sporting activities surrounded by a border of printed cotton with various flags of the world. This was presented to The Quilters Guild in recognition of the support given by The Guild to ‘A Gift of Quilts’ - a cultural Olympiad project accompanying the 2012 games which presented each participating country in the Olympic games a quilt.

This printed ship is one of the images on ‘Three Ships from Hull: Captain Cook 250’ by Cathy Corbishley Michel. The quilt is made with cyanotype prints which celebrates 250 years since Captain Cook set sail to explore distant oceans in 1768. All the images on the piece relate to Captain Cook’s 2nd and 3rd Voyages. High contrast images were taken from public collections, engravings and books, and images include: Chronometer used to navigate (and included are modern photographs of the instruments he used in the national maritime museum); Map of South Georgia drawn by Cook who was an amazing navigator and map maker; other images show some of the items he brought back with him from his travels. The images were printed and then joined together, and quilted with a simple design so as not to detract from the interesting images as the focal point of the piece.