Susie Batchelor, Head of Audiences and Collections at Gunnersbury, will provide a short tour of the quilting exhibition for Friends. It will be this coming Saturday at 11am. Just turn up, admission is free. It is a lovely display. And bring your pocket money as there are some special things to buy, including a tea towel with the whole of the Acton quilt design on it. The fabrics used and the style place the date of the creation of this large quilt around 1825. Whoever designed it knew the Bible well and included pictures of well-known stories, but they also had impressive horticultural knowledge with roses, tulips, auriculas and pineapples. There are several figures of people stitched into the border along with little vignettes such asbutterflies and baskets with parrots and what might be small birds of prey perched on their handles. Its fabulous!

There are several historic quilts and also a selection of modern ones. Volunteers have stitched small sample quilts, copying elements of the designs from the Acton quilt so that you can examine them closely as the original is too fragile to handle.

You can get a high resolution image, which you can enlarge and explore on screen, from the Gunnersbury website link above and if you cannot come on Saturday, the exhibition runs until 12 January 2020.

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