Calne Community Quilt
It is always a treat when one of our own members talks to the group about a local project that they have been involved with so when Sue Peskett volunteered to tell us about the recently complete Calne Community Quilt we were all extremely excited.
The aim of the project was to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Joseph Priestley’s discovery of oxygen while living in Calne. He was a radical supporter of the American War of Independence and fled to America ending up in Pennsylvania.
Sue was approached to lead the project and a team of like-minded friends was formed to create a plan, decide on a time scale, colour, design and style. A hanging tryptic was chosen with eight inch squares and the colours of Calne’s flag blue, green and white (with tones) seemed an appropriate choice. Facebook was used to discover local response and people were invited to Calne Library on 10 February to collect pre prepared packs of fabric, wadding and backing. The technique for the creation of the square was open as long as it stuck to the fabric. Families were limited to one pack each due to the wonderful response and were given a few suggestions for the topic of their square namely, oxygen, Calne or Joseph Priestley. To achieve the 6 month completion target everyone was asked to return their squares after 6 weeks on 23 March.
On completion date 87 squares were returned and then came the challenge of creating borders, headers and footers. To ensure consistency, teams of three were formed to prepare and iron the squares and then stitch them together using the same machine. The title text in the header was stitched by Lindsay S.
At the unveiling in the Library, three direct American descendants of Joseph Priestley attended and the Town Council funded a brochure giving details of the project together with the names of everyone who had taken part. Lord Kerry, a descendent of Lord Sherburne of Bowood, unveiled the quilt and Jon Fisher, Mayor of Calne also attended.
I was particularly interested to see how many members of Textile and Stitch Around Marlborough had created squares:
Diana K Rosemary C Fiona C
Margaret H Lindsay S Sue P
Linda W
Sue mentioned three different squares which had special stories attached to them. Amy’s which is now displayed on a poster at the Brompton Hospital, Phoebe (91) and Great Granddaughter, Saphia (11) had worked together to produce a square and Edwina whose three hearts represented three different hospitals who had helped her husband.
To produce such an amazing community quilt in only 10 months is a great achievement and Calne must be very proud it has so many dedicated and talented inhabitants.
Thanks Sue for your interesting talk.
Report by Ros
Photos by Ros