KARACHI: The Quilt Show, organised by the Piecemakers’ Guild of around 18 very talented, innovative, crafty and sweet ladies, which opened at the Alliance Francaise on Friday, offers an opportunity to appreciate some 85 labours of love.

The show has the quilts displayed in five different categories. There are the bed quilts or large quilts, small quilts such as quilts made for children, art quilts, miniatures and quilted creations.

Perhaps the most eye-catching quilts of all, which really stood out among all the categories at the exhibition, had to be the three inspired or based on the famous and historic Jane A. Stickle quilt called ‘Dear Jane’, which dates back to the American Civil War. The original quilt, which was started in 1817 and completed in 1863, has 169 five-inch blocks, each in different patterns, containing a remarkable total of 5,602 pieces surrounded by a unique scalloped border. Today it is placed in the Bennington Museum in Vermont.

Out here, we have our own three quilters Samina Qureshi, Khalida Afsar and Sabeen Majeed, who have their quilts based on ‘Dear Jane’ at the show. Ms Qureshi who has some 25 exhibits there, has named her ‘Dear Jane’ based hand-pieced and hand-quilted masterpiece ‘My Precious Jane’, which also bagged the first prize at the exhibition.

The two-day event concludes today

The other version of ‘Dear Jane’ by Khalida Afsar is named ‘Rainbow Jane’. “Every quilter has tried their hand at making a ‘Dear Jane’ quilt but it is not that simple or easy to piece together so many pieces. My particular one is a full version, of 225 pieces and four-inch blocks,” she said.

The third version is by Sabeen Majeed and it is named ‘Jane Want Colour Wash’. All three versions of the ‘Dear Jane’ quilts took around nine years to complete.

“It is a tedious labour of love, demanding much time and effort,” Ms Qureshi told Dawn. “That’s also why, although our three quilts are a part of the exhibition here, they are not for sale,” she smiled.

But the best quilt of the show and also the best in its category of small quilts was Samiah Ahsan’s ‘Tokyo Calling’. The oriental-themed quilt, depicting an aspect of the Japanese way of life, is machine-pieced, hand-quilted, hand-appliquéd and embroidered, and has a central panel with small blocks surrounding it.

Ms Qureshi had another masterpiece, a 17 inches by 23 inches landscape that got the first prize in the art quilts category, which was for sale though.

She was also willing to sell her 80 inches by 80 inches quilt ‘Hey Bird’, if anyone was willing to buy it for Rs75,000 that is. The quilt was the second prize winner in its category of bed or large quilts.

“For this I put together two of my old and unfinished objects, which we also call UFOs,” she said. “Merging the elements of the two different quilts, I added a coordinating background fabric to make a totally new and different quilt.”

The Piecemakers’ Guild was founded by Samina Qureshi and Samiah Ahsan some 15 years ago in 2008 and this is their fifth show.

“In fact, this is our first one in four years as we had to take a break due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Samina. “As it is, you cannot make it an annual event as there needs to be work to show at the exhibition and quilting takes time,” she added.

Still the quilters hold regular meet-ups where they show each other their works in progress for ideas, advice and suggestions from each other.

The Quilt Show concludes on Saturday (today).

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2023