CQ@10

  • Jennie Wood CQ@10
  • Patricia Collinson CQ@10

To celebrate its 10th birthday, Contemporary Quilt (CQ) has taken tin (the symbol for 10th anniversaries) as a springboard for creativity. Members took inspiration from an image of a tin mine or the history behind the tin industry. They used any style, technique, or material to make quilts measuring between 1 metre and 5 metres around the edge.

One image can thus provoke a wide variety of interpretations, as this exhibition shows. The image used as a starting point is Tony Howell’s photograph of East Poole Tin Mine in Cornwall (used with permission).

Contemporary quilts draw heavily on the traditions of quilting, with layers stitched together. They can be simply handmade, or they can embrace all the techniques and mediums that are available to textile artists nowadays – including technological techniques like digital photography.

CQ (www.contemporaryquilt.org.uk ) is one of the specialist groups of The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles – at age 10 this dynamic group has some 680 members throughout the UK and abroad, who keep in touch mostly online and through its quarterly magazine. CQ’s summer and winter schools are annual events, and a number of local groups have formed.

Quilts made by artists Jennie Wood (top), Patricia Collinson (right) and Terry Donaldson (front page).