Chennai’s quarantine quilt undertaking: the digital avatar of India International Quilt Festival begins this weekend
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With a brand new part for little one artists, a purchasing hub and lectures, the digital avatar of India International Quilt Festival begins this weekend
In the village of Nattarasankottai in Tamil Nadu, 11 college students of the KMSC Girls Higher Secondary School pleated, folded, embroidered and sewed beneath the watchful eye of their craft academics and native deity, Kanattammal. They have been launched to quilting by Meena Subramaniam — whose grandfather hails from the village — in January 2020. She went there armed with quilting books and materials, and the college students picked a sample of their option to work on. Subramaniam promised to test on them in May, however then the pandemic caught. So, with the assist from the faculty’s laptop instructor, she defined quilting intricacies to them through Zoom calls, all the approach from London the place she lives.
The pandemic has, little question, prompted a number of creative pursuits and quilting appears to be one of the hottest actions. We’ve seen youngsters be taught the artwork from relations, grandmothers designing quilts for the household, and lots of making masks and blankets to be donated. At Nattarasankottai, the ladies used to assemble in the faculty’s stitching room and labored for 3 to 4 hours a day to create 11 quilts that have been despatched for the 2021 India International Quilt Festival (IIQF).
At the pageant’s first version held in Chennai in 2019, the organisers had promised a second version for 2021. Now, regardless of the pandemic, they’re sticking to that promise and taking the three-day IIQF digital in the present day.
Students of the KMSC Girls Higher Secondary School making quilts
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Bringing in the children
This time round, there’s a particular class, Gen Nxt, for quilts made by youngsters beneath the age of 18. The class now has 17 entries: 11 from Nattarasankottai, 5 from Chennai and one from Pune. “We owe it to our children to pass on the knowledge of our ancestors,” says Tina Katwal, a co-founder at IIQF who additionally began India’s first quilting studio, The Square Inch, again in 2014. “It is the only way children are going to have a rich, tactile experience that is removed from their usual digital world.” She believes that quilting is a approach of creating reminiscences and expressing emotion.
The lockdown and the subsequent no-school days helped many dad and mom just do that as they sat with their children and taught them handwork. “I have no regrets about missed school days,” says quilter Chitra Mandanna, who took the time as a chance to show her five-year-old, Isha, quilting. “She has always seen me quilting and whenever I sat at my machine, she wanted to do it too. So, with leftover fabric scraps from my work, Isha began to put them together to create blocks,” explains Mandanna, whose daughter is maybe the youngest entrant in the Gen Next class.
Saahiti Sriram is a tad older at six. Her mom Soumyalakshmi, an award-winning quilter herself, says, “She is no stranger to the needle and thread. While I sat quilting, she would make clothes for her dolls. It is our way of mother-daughter bonding… talking about colours and designs.”
Taking IIQF digital
Besides the Gen Nxt class, there’s a bit for Indian quilts, the place the entries mirror India’s huge textile custom, and the Floral Rhapsody themed class that invitations quilts crafted utilizing any method, model and methodology of building.
The turnout is spectacular, however pulling off IIQF was a problem. “We reinvented ourselves so many times in the past 12 months,” says co-founder Varsha Sundararajan. Due to the pandemic, sponsors have been arduous to come back by and it was troublesome to persuade them a couple of digital occasion. “The greater worry was holding on to so many amazing quilters who weren’t comfortable or familiar with technology and gadgets,” she provides.
But Katwal, Sundararajan and co-founder Deepa Vasudevan pulled off a coup. For the quilt present competitors, 288 quilts have been submitted by 139 quilters/teams from Australia, India, Kenya, Kuwait, Singapore, South Africa, UAE, UK and the USA. This, in a yr the place some of the main worldwide quilting occasions akin to the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival, the International Quilt Festival (Houston), and the Carrefour Européen du Patchwork (Grand Est area, France) have been cancelled.
A creation from the 2019 India International Quilt Festival
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Lectures and a showcase
It is not only quilts on show. There are a number of workshops on quilting methods for novices and the skilled, an artisan showcase, a purchasing hub and lectures. Patrick Finn, photographer and creator of Quilts of India: Timeless Textiles (that options over 25 quilting methods) will discuss custom and quilting in a particular lecture. Contemporary quilting developments can be explored in a session by Luana Rubin, co-owner of eQuilter.com, a quilt material retailer that is still a favorite amongst quilters worldwide. Rubin’s platform additionally gathers hundreds of donated consolation quilts to distribute round the world for catastrophe reduction.
Sundararajan is happy to have roped in three eminent judges: Reena Dewan of Kolkata Centre for Creativity, Marline Turner of the South African Quilters’ Guild, and quilter Paramjeet Bawa (her quilt, ‘Dust Storm’ has received worldwide accolades) who can be presenting a trunk present of her creations at IIQF. “The goal of IIQF is to put India’s rich legacy of embroidery, quilting traditions and textiles on the global quilting map. The act of stitching together pieces of rags into a beautiful whole that can be reused is what quilting is all about,” concludes Katwal.
The India International Quilt Festival 2021 goes reside on January 23 at 9.30 am. For particulars, go to indiaquiltfestival.com
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