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Julia O'Connell standing in a sewing room holding a pile of folded quilts.
Credit: Andrew Moore

A Quilt In The Making

Posted
Monday 21 October 2024

In early 2024 we commissioned artist Julia O’Connell to create a quilt to celebrate our 50th anniversary. A new hand stitched quilt that would embody the spirit of community, expression and activism. Here Julia shares her experience of making the quilt and the brilliant community members who stitched with her…

My artistic relationship with the arts centre has grown over the last few years and particularly since the arts centre began to host open workshops towards the end of the pandemic in 2021. During that time, I developed a programme of ‘slow stitch and breathe’ workshops where participants could find agency in creating a small hand stitched textile and take time out from their hectic lives. 

Use What You Have

As my artistic practice has evolved over the years, I have become very conscious about the mountains of textile waste produced globally. It’s right I feel a responsibility to think more sustainably about my work, what I produce, and try to re-use or over dye what fabrics I have. (Basically, I never throw anything away!)

That coupled with the simple joyous act of picking up a needle and thread and sewing one piece of cloth to another gave me the idea for ‘A Quilt In The Making’. 

Together

With this commission, the brief was to also connect with groups of people and organisations across Coventry, inviting participants, through a number of workshops, to make small, stitched blocks with fragments of assorted fabric stitched to linen, with which I would then interpret and piece together into a final celebratory quilt. 

With the support of my wonderful textile assistant Julie Joannides, this was a powerful experience – to spend time talking, sharing stories, sewing and making textile pieces with so many wonderful people at places like Kairos - Women Working Together, Canley Community Centre (Chit Chat Group), George Eliot Hospital (Intensive Care Nurses and Staff), and Foleshill Women’s Training, as well as with students and staff at the Arts Centre and University of Warwick. 

Many of the participants had never stitched before and were at first doubtful about their making abilities. I emphasised that by using a simple running stitch they could begin to learn to hand sew, and perhaps, as well as making a small contributing piece for the arts centre quilt, by using the same technique, they would soon be able to patch and mend clothes or begin a handmade quilt in the future! 

I also reiterated that their stitches didn’t need to be straight, that wonky was good, in fact VERY good and that anything they didn’t like could easily be unpicked and begun again! 

It seemed that by removing ‘technical’ barriers, people relaxed more and eased into the sewing process with less fear of making mistakes. I think that if you are working with others, especially where there is a new skill to be offered, then there also needs to be room for freedom of expression, uninhibited from too much ‘proper’ restriction. 

Piece By Piece

After working with nearly 200 people over the spring and summer months, in September, I tipped out a bag full of sewn fabric pieces on to the floor in my studio. All I had to do now was hand stitch them together to make the quilt! 

It’s been fascinating to regard the characteristics of each of the stitchers quilt blocks. Their marks on cloth. Stitches large and small, random colours of connecting thread, gorgeous choices of snippets of cloth previously earmarked for landfill, including vintage scraps from the 1950s, found cotton pieces, tactile corduroys, shiny satins and discarded silk scarves - all chosen in a moment and now ‘seamed’ together by me to make this whole united cloth. 

It’s been a privilege to stitch with the people who contributed to A Quilt In The Making and to spend my hours interpreting and creatively stitching everything together. I hope you get time to see the quilt, to pause and view each of the wonderful blocks. There will be some wonky quilt lines and some patches over patches…but that’s just as it should be!

Quilt Commission Launch and Artist Talk  

Sat 2 Nov, 1:30 – 3:30pm

Join us for the launch of our new community quilt commission to celebrate the power of collaboration and our 50th anniversary. Artist Julia O’Connell will give a talk with our Director Doreen Foster at 2pm. No need to book, just drop in! Find out more here.

Julia O’Connell, Artist and Projects Producer

Work includes Visible Maker project warp speed - Textile Society of America’s Symposium, Boston, U.S (2020), Self Portrait - Mother/Service/Voice - Ice Floe Press, Toronto, Canada (2021). Meanwhile - Shop Front Theatre, Small Scale City – Artspace Coventry, England (2021-22). 

Julia was an International Changemaker artist supported by Coventry City of Culture Trust and the British Council. In 2022 she travelled to Morocco to explore natural dye production and sustainable garment manufacturing and in the latter half of ’22, she joined quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama for a retreat workshop in Mississippi, U.S. In January 2024, she travelled to Bhuj, India to stitch alongside women from grassroot textile enterprises whose objectives are to preserve traditional hand crafts.

Julia was the designer and led a team of six artists to create the coat for Godiva Awakes (Imagineer Productions) for the Cultural Olympiad, London 2012She was Artist in Residence at The War Memorial Park, Coventry as part of their WW1 Commemorations. Julia is a past winner of the Volvo Art & Design prize at Coventry University and has a First Class Honours Degree in Textiles. 

Julia follows the Slow Textiles movement, creating works from sustainable materials including vintage and found linen and cotton fabrics, and re-using gifted sewing ephemera. 

Julia is also the theatre producer for Theatre Absolute in Coventry, an award-winning professional theatre company in Coventry. After performing and touring across the UK, US and Europe, she co-founded the Shop Front Theatre (SFT) in 2008 in City Arcade, Coventry with playwright Chris O’Connell. The SFT was a low fi theatre and arts space in a disused fish and chip shop. The company was awarded the Olywen Wymark Award for Theatre Writing in 2021.

Julia O'Connell stitching a quilt.

A Closer Look

Quilt close-up
Credit: Andrew Moore
Julia O'Connell's notebook with sketches and fabric samples.
Credit: Andrew Moore

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