Written piece
Alterations
Gail Hoad
Jamaica
About this piece
Making a quilt is not just a neat union of harmonious parts, but also pulling apart old things, ripping threads, unravelling the unworkable and realising other joinings to create a new covering, new shelter. It is the hard, continuing work of altering of old garments into new.
You see that line of stitching
how it not quite straight
if you look real close and careful at it?
Feel how that garment
never quite fit?
See that hole
where silverfish and moth
and greed
eat through the cloth?
See that spot
a drop of rust-red
from pin-prick
or whip-lash splash
marring the fabric?
Look where the spinning wheel
that pulled against the grain
was not only Indian charkha
spinning fibres, futures
but also West Indian treadmill
turning and twisting
protesting sinews, feet, flesh
Sometimes
to try to get it right
you have to pull things apart
Rip out
old seemings
cut away
rotten grey broadcloth
to refashion that old-fashioned
Empire line
into something new
with broad bright panels
of
Madras
Ankara
Sea Island Cotton
Tapa
Break steel needles
rusty with seawater journeys and tears
to carve our own
from wood and bones
love, patience and years
to knit together
new coverings
for Our time