Years of creative work on display

DOUG FIELD/Fairfax NZ

QUILT SHOW: Quilt show co-ordinator Mary Napper with Circles at Midnight by Te Anau quilter Robyn Rogers. Beside it, a glimpse of classic American quilting, Fourth of July by Carol Erskine, of Tuatapere, now on show at the Southland Museum.

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Twenty-one years of creative women's work went on show at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery last week.

Quilts Takitimu is an exhibition of pieces made in a quilting group set up in Ohai Nightcaps in 1991, still going strong with members coming together for a day every fortnight, coming to a Nightcaps base from Curio Bay, Tuatapere, Bluff, Invercargill and Te Anau.

Group chairwoman Glenda Drummond said at the official opening that the club had around three dozen active members.

American women or others from overseas visiting families dairying here would join the club for as long as they had or on repeat visits introduce new ideas, methods or designs.

The current exhibition shows 30 pieces of quilt work hung or laid out.

“It puts paid to the idea that quilts are just for sleeping under," said museum manager Gael Ramsay.

While most of the quilts conform to the size, weight and warmth expectations of bedding, many use designs and colours that are more accurately art than craft although, as Ms Ramsay points out, who can say the difference.

Some of the designs are incredibly intricate. Other work is quilted but not to make quilts.

Fabric is quilted for bags, dolls, and a huge picture book whose thick padded pages turn flat and warm, designed to last as long as the timeless stories they tell.

Quilts Takitimu is open to the public at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery until September 23

- © Fairfax NZ News

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