Textiles and paintings in Oxford

Last week, I went on a trip to Oxford with three quilter friends to see an exhibition of quilts from Hawaii entitled ‘Hawaii Ma uka to Ma kai’. Ma uka to Ma kai exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford Click on this link to exhibition on the Museum website: https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/ma-uka-to-ma-kai to see an explanation of the Hawaiian understanding of the different elements of the natural environment – and how these were portrayed in the quilts. The technique for making the quilts is a little like the craft activity you might have tried as a child: folding a square of paper either into four or into eight and then cutting into the folds, so that when you open the paper out, you have created a snowflake pattern. The complex cut shapes for the quilts in this case included leaves, flowers, fish, octopi and other natural forms. The cut shape is appliqued onto the background fabric and then the background is quilted in lines which echo the shapes. All the applique seemed to be…