Festival of Quilts 9 August 2018

I think I've outgrown the Festival of Quilts.  It's big, with lots of technical expertise.  I'm now at the stage where I want smaller, more considered works involving narrative, with more select pieces that require depth of consideration.

My main reason for going to FoQ was to hear the talk given by Ruth Singer, Criminal Quilts.  This made it worthwhile.  Ruth had accessed the Stafford Museum Archive of women criminals in from Stafford Prison 1865-1916.  She started with the leather bound albums of mugshots of criminal women.  She has a particular interest in clothing and catalogued photos, clothing and occupations.  Made a quilt, which she then sold to the museum.  Her work needs a meaty narrative (her words) and not be purely decorative (yippee!!).  Colours taken from Shire Hall building where the archive is.  Mug shots often included women's hands on their chests - for their identifying marks.  Mill workers often had missing fingers, and one image showed malformed, curving little fingers which is apparently a genetic condition.

Ruth linked long prison sentences and hard labour in her work - repetitive work - doing time - by using hand sewn patchwork using antique fabrics.  Also considered containment - using log cabin patchwork to contain images of women prisoners.  Also made a shawl (archetypal clothing for women of the era) with gridded images of these women.  Lovely.  Displayed as a square at the exhibition, but better in her photo when worn as a shawl.  Ruth used Ancestry UK to try to find out more about these women - but as yet, no-one has come forward as a relation.  Probably because many of these women had been incarcerated for prostitution.  Most were petty criminals, stealing due to poverty and deprivation.  Marital status always recorded.  Some women were arrested when single (no man to support them), then no arrests while married (financially supported?) then more arrests when widowed.

Agnes - multiple prison sentences.  Prostitute, often arrested for drunkenness, violence and theft, but not prostitution.  Assaulted father for first arrest. Wonder what sort of home??

New ways of exploring data - fabric bar chart for age when arrested, colours for spinster (patterned fabric), wife (cream), widow (black). Gives human story.  Repeat offender, repeat pattern.

Bridget Warrilow.  Repeat offender.  Not while married!  4 year sentence for selling a stolen doormat for 3d.  Yet records around the same time indicate men procuring girls for prostitution got a sentence of 4 months!.

Great talk.