Hidden Threads

In Quilting and Patchwork today (the B5Media blog) Mary Emma Allen talks about special quilt projects commemorating the upcoming Olympics. She asks us to share any projects we have planned.

I found this so interesting. I’ve always thought of quilting as an individual or community venture, offering little slices of immortality by marking weddings or anniversaries, personal triumphs, in fabric.

I never really put it together until now, the thought of quilts as time capsules or quilts as cultural records. In my sense of it, quilts did those things, but not intentionally. I always saw them as unconcerned with the wider world and focused on the universal experience of their times through the personal experience of families.

This seems different somehow, a quilt to commemorate the Olympics in China. Now that the idea has taken hold of my imagination, I see that the AIDS Memorial Quilt is like that and probably many others too that I just never quite saw for what they were. Thank you Quilting and Patchwork for opening my eyes.