Hullo all,

To recognise the telling off a dear colleague gave me for calling it “spring” just because the sun is out, today’s Fem Friday is all about quilts and quilting.

While we’re on the topic of weather, here’s a quilt (by a woman) that is also a data visualisation about weather. Lots of things I like here, including the time span it took to create – one line of crochet for every day of last year. Not a lot of references online for this one so look at an image:

https://www.facebook.com/MeteorologistEllenBacca/photos/a.322769304480787.72262.322763697814681/1201634473260928/?type=3

This week I was also introduced to the work of Harriet Powers, who was born into slavery and was an accomplished quilter and folk artist. She is most famous for her “Bible Quilt”:

We don't know the details but what we will call the Pictorial Quilt may have been commissioned after the Bible Quilt was seen at the exposition in Atlanta. It was then given to Dr Charles Cuthbert Hall in 1898. Hall was a pastor who dedicated much of his life to the education of his fellow African Americans. Apparently the quilt was meaningful to him as he kept and cherished it as did his family after his death. This second existing quilt was a bit different than the first, mixing Biblical stories with celestial and other events.

http://www.historyofquilts.com/hpowers.html

Finally, a film about the place of quilts in women’s lives – one for your lunch break if you are in the US and maybe for tomorrow if you are west of that:

Quilts was a ground breaking film used by folklorists, anthropologists and historians of art and womens history that presented the lives, art, work and philosophy of ordinary women in the days when few documentaries came from women filmmakers. This deceptively simple film won most of the major awards for independent films during the years after its release in 1981.

http://www.folkstreams.net/film,37

Stay warm,

Alex.