Making the grief quilt with my mum...

I think this little film, made with the help of my brother Dan, is a perfect representation of how it felt to make this quilt. So I won’t add much more in writing, but I just wanted to give some extra context about how I came to know of grief quilts below.

Shall we begin with what is a grief quilt?

A grief quilt, also known as a bereavement quilt or memory quilt, is a quilt that honours someone who has passed away. It can be a way to remember and heal after a loss. More traditionally, widows’ quilts had a muted or monochrome colour palette of black and white. In this case my mum and I wanted to celebrate the life of my grandma, who i’ve always called Grum. She was the matriarch of our family who delighted in wearing lipstick and eating ice cream every single day.

There is a long history of grief quilts which dates back to well before I was born. Many communities have sewn collectively to commemorate, honour and remember those who are no longer with us. The biggest example that comes to mind is the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was started in the mid-eighties to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons as of 2020, it was the largest piece of community folk art in the world. It was conceived in 1985 during the early years of the AIDS pandemic, when social stigma prevented many AIDS victims from receiving funerals. I first saw photos of it laid out across Washington DC when I was a teenager and I never forgot the scale and message of it: it was so powerful.

I feel like humanity has been in a state of collective grief for half a decade. The collective loss of human life in the last five years has been almost impossible to process. Grandparents dying feels like the natural cycle of life, a grief that most people will know at some point; if the grandparent has lived to an old age it rarely feels like great tragedy. But the grief can still floor you when it does happen. Grandparents are your best link to the past and a key to understanding your present. When they pass, your family tree loses its roots and becomes a parental trunk with a load of sibling saplings.

In making this quilt, mum and I had the time and space we needed to be together and process Grum’s love. I hope the this little film gives you a sense of the creative process. For anyone experiencing loss, my heart goes out to you. I really believe in the simple power of cutting out shapes, stitching them together and making something anew. I think doing that with someone you love or for someone you love can imbue the fabric with an almost talismanic comforting quality. Thank you for allowing me to share this little project of ours with you.

This quilt is part of a series of work entitled Assemble To Honour. It is made up of six large-scale textile pieces to honour birth, death, love, grief, sex and sleep. Stitching my matriarchal rights of passage into cloth, with the intention of processing what my body and soul is feeling more deeply. When the conversations have been had, the food has been eaten, the prayers have been said, what’s left is the fabric. To comfort, to protect, to love and to hold.