Collage and Slow Stitch with Artist Melinda Schwakhofer from Significant Seams

“The Quarantine Quilt Project” has emerged collectively and in parallel across the country as a means to feel connected, and to connect with one another despite physical distance during the pandemic in 2020.
This video and others in its playlist, along with a range of resources available at www.thequarantinequiltproject.org and significantseams.org, have been created to try to support people in engaging in creative activity for their wellbeing generally, and to inspire them to make a patch for a Quarantine Quilt generally. They have been created alongside the delivery of courses commissioned by Devon NHS Partnership Trust with support from Arts Council England.
Hundreds, if not thousands of people, are making patches for one of at least 10 community quilt projects.
Arthur & Martha’s ‘Here Comes the Sun’ Quilt;
Brightlingsea Covid 19 Community Quilt;
The Cambridgeshire Redwork Quarantine Quilt;
Changing Lives Stitching through the Pandemic Project;
Envisage Arts A Stitch in Time Quilt;
The Liverpool Lockdown Quilt;
The Loss Project;
Oxford’s OVADA quilt;
Significant Seams Quarantine Quilt;
Stitches-in-Time By-You Tapestry
The projects are a series of storytelling ones. Each is inviting a patch about individuals’ experience of the coronavirus pandemic.
Our network has a wide geographic spread. Community quilts are being made in West Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Essex ,and the South West. Virtual quilts are being made too - in conjunction with Art Refuge. Their project, fittingly, is emblematic of the plight of displaced people. All of these projects are using their platform to support people who are vulnerable through making.
Our network of projects also has other specialisms that make them especially adept at supporting us all in this vulnerable life moment. They all regularly work with so-called vulnerable groups: the elderly, people with mental health difficulties, minority communities, people at high risk of homelessness, the homeless, ex-offenders, displaced and resettled people, the grieving.
These projects are often, though not always, led by textile artists and arts & health facilitators. The Significant Seams project is also recognising that those coordinating projects are also grappling with their own vulnerabilities at this time - and have been developing a network and peer support amongst these projects.
Stitching has immense therapeutic benefits. In our programmmes at Significant Seams, we prefer the terms ‘craftfulness,’ and ‘craftivism.’ The making process demands a gentle focus and repetitive motions. When achieved, the making process triggers good feelings. Medicine now validates what stitchers already know. The Covid-19 Social Research Study, led by Dr Daisy Fancourt, found that in the 17 weeks from the beginning of lockdown, creative activities proved the most protective of mental health.
People are invited to send words or designs which reflect their feelings and responses to the pandemic to any of the community quilt projects in the network, though please check for patch instructions and deadlines with the projects. All are linked at www.thequarantinequiltproject.org
A combination of Arts Council England project funding and emergency funding has enabled us to adapt and try to support others in adapting. We are devising, piloting, and evaluating ways of running mental health supportive arts courses remotely, and creating new resources for those courses. In this process, we are trying to amplify the human stories, especially those about the power of creating and making on our individual and collective wellbeing. Project participants are telling us in their own words, and via their patches, about their experience of the pandemic, and the role of creativity in it for them.
During summer 2020, rree participation kits are available for people who are isolated in Devon, England, thanks to funding from the Devon Community Foundation.
Significant Seams are inviting three types of patches:
FIRST a brick coloured and shaped patch of 7inches x 5 inches.We’re encouraging words summing up this time on these.
SECOND You can create a design that tells of your experience of lockdown on a 7 inch square.
THIRD You can make and personalise a traditional patchwork design. Those patches are to be 13 inches.
Full details are available online at www.thequarantinequiltproject.org and www.significantseams.org.uk .
Completed Quarantine Quilts will be part of an online exhibition in the first instance. Further plans are subject to evolving circumstances.

Видео Collage and Slow Stitch with Artist Melinda Schwakhofer from Significant Seams канала Significant Seams CIC