The quilting theme continues as I ended up down at Brixton Market yesterday, teaching three 7 year old girls how to do running stitch, at the launch of the new Skillshare Shop, part of the Transition Town initiative in Brixton Market.

I took some of my favourite old patchwork pieces I own, as inspiration, but we just stuck to a simple running stitch and learning how to use a needle and thread.

The Skillshare shop is run by Hannah Lewis, a designer who, like me, believes in the value and importance of design skills and knowledge in creating social change. She has worked tirelessly with her Remade in Brixton initiative and has now found a semi-permanent home in the Market to run all sorts of workshops in re-skilling.

Afterwards, I actually ended up serendipitously re-reading Emily Campbell's paper titled You know more than you think you do: design as resourcefulness and self-reliance, part of the RSA's Design & Society initiative.I have talked alot about this paper before, but it is a really well-written contextualisation of the issues.

Campbell talks of the need for designer's to redefine themselves to help make people more resourceful, without lowering the skill and threshold that defines a designer. Her definition of resourcfulness includes being able to think on your feet, to make something out of little or nothing, and having a confidence that comes with knowledge - a range of skills that are at your disposal.

One part of me thinks that it is not just designer's who have these 'resourceful' skills - I've seen plenty of people down at the Brixton Skillshare shop who are teaching a range of skills from how to build a solar-stove to making jewellery and they are not designers. But, I think that what Campbell is referring to is a range of skills that are part of a designer's professional repertoire - this is where we are different. If these skills are needed more in society, and making more resource-depleting products is becoming less of a viable activity, then this new role for designer's makes sense. I know I want to stay in a job!

Also, I saw the way these 7 year old girls struggled to stay focused on a simple new skill that they had learnt - using a needle and thread. If we do not continue to pass on these valuable skills, people will not develop the range of skills that allows them to feel confident with materials and processes and to be active rather than passive citizens.

The show is up finally after many frantic moments. I also managed to produce some text to go along side the work - it is actually some of the blog entries from here, as a sort of progress diary.

As I sent out invites and information explaining what the work was about, I realised there were two key questions I have been unconsciously trying to answer (or ask!):

How can digital textile print be used to enhance and celebrate old heirloom fabric pieces?

Can a 'digital craft' process, using sustainable base cloths, help to reinvent the traditions of quilting and patchwork?

Regarding the first question, the large hanging panel above the samples was addressing this - I had scanned in pieces of fabric that I cherish - an old half finished shirt made from a Liberty fabric by my godmother in the 1970's, an old fabric from my mum which I had tried to make into a bag when I was 19, and some tiny patchwork hexagons from someone's unfinished quilt I found in a market. These were all enlarged and simply digitally printed onto a large panel of organic cotton/hemp.

By enlarging these tiny fragments of memory and resourcefulness, I wanted to give them the attention I feel they deserve.

This could be used for clients who wanted to re-invigorate old heirloom pieces, and could be applied to cushions, quilts or any household textiles.

In regards to a new type of 'digital' quilting, I only managed to produce samples or 'fabric sketches' for how this process could be used to produce quilts, but it has loads of potential....maybe my next residence can follow this up!

The show is on until July 23rd.

The last few days of finishing the samples, with help from the lovely Yemi in the studio.

Looking at all the samples together, the 'quilting' theme becomes very evident. I have been reflecting on this, and my obsession with hand stitching, and particularly the 'kantha' stitch, which is a running stitch used in India, to quilt many layers of old fabric together.

There is something so satisfying about taking many random elements - fragments of different types of fabric, each with their own personal meaning - and to layer them together through a simple, meditative running stitch. The new textile formed is heavy in weight and there is something so reassuring about this - it has been so neatly embedded and brought together. The many 'fragments' have been brought together, so there is a new 'whole'.

As Lucy Norris says in the TED Upcycling Textiles book of essays (due to be published soon): "Quilting and patchwork are techniques that involve the destruction of objects which hold within them emotional attachments to specific people, places and moments in time, and stitching them into newly rearranged wholes, preserving certain memories while radically re-contextualizing them".

Its also the ultimate in 'zero waste cutting'! Using quilting shapes and templates is so efficient and there is something so lovely about using these age-old techniques that have been specifically developed to encourage resourcefulness.

More thoughts to follow, but I will be trying to write some of them up to go along side the samples at the show.

Exhibition launch, next Wednesday 7th July at Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Art. All welcome!

AA2A 2010
Joyce Addai-Davis, Lydia Goldblatt, Florian Roithmayr, Clara Vuletich and Emma Wieslander

8 – 23 July 2010

Opening Wednesday 7 July, 5.00 – 7.00pm

Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Arts

45 - 65 Peckham Road London SE5 8UF

Opening times: Monday to Friday 9am - 6pm

Camberwell Space is pleased to present exciting new work by artists created during their Artists Access to Art College Scheme (AA2A) at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2010. Including:

Joyce Addai-Davis is a weaver who set out as a part of her residency to weave a garment layplan with a specially engineered textile design on a Jacquard Loom. She enlisted fashion designer Emma Hamshare who works engineering laser-cut designs to garment pattern pieces. ‘What you see is a scaled model of the resulting garment pieces orbiting each other. The layplan consists of the individual components of a garment laid flat. Designing the textile pattern to fit the garment perfectly reduces waste to create a streamlined method of production for custom made garments.’

Clara Vuletich is a printed textile designer and a researcher in sustainable textile design exploring ideas of material reuse, digital craft techniques and Slow design. For this project, Vuletich is further investigating her interest in combining traditional textile printing techniques such as screen and block printing with digital print technology and the possibilities of digitally printing onto recycled textiles. Using a collection of personal and valued textile fragments for design inspiration, and the title 'Fragments', the artist will explore the ‘emotional durability’ of textiles and pattern.