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The beginning of a collection of 'Guerilla Coasters' that will be prompting people to join the Building Hope community @1mactsofhope So how would you make the your community a more hopeful place? In 6 words or fewer? #buildinghope #millionActsofHope
It seems appropriate to begin posting my Building Hope 'coasters' as the One Million Acts of Hope campaign gets going. @1mactsofhope Thanks to @bartonquilter for this suggestion. So how would you make the your community a more hopeful place? In 6 wo
Second day #threadsfestival @sunnybankmills with work from our BA Textiles Practice course. Many great conversations yesterday, including with @janicegunnertextiles , @cuttsandsons , @melanielovesquilts @sometimes_katy_quilts @scrappyquiltsbyfay Co
This weekend is Threads Festival @sunnybankmills Alongside an amazing Makers Market there will be an exhibition by @the62group and also a taster exhibition of work by we BA textiles practice students ahead of our graduate show next month. If you&r
Building Hope There are many ways to make our communities more friendly. And thinking laterally and literally while in a queue, ‘one for me and one for you’ makes everyone feel a bit better about their fellow human beings. So how would y
And this is how it all began, my activist stitching began with this very shouty quilt at Festival of Quilts 2023. Inspired by my #fdatextilespractice @bradfordtextiles . This weekend it will be in the @whiterosequilters display at St Chad's Centenary
Building Hope In these dark times we need to think of those in our community who are feeling threatened and unwanted. Take time to give them a kind word, a smile, just to let them know they are a valued part of the community. Please share your sugges
Building Hope Crowd sourced suggestions for actions that can make our communities more welcoming to all, no matter what faith they hold or where they are from. If you have a suggestion for building hope in 6 words or fewer, then please comment. Thank
It is a while since I posted about my work. I have been busy preparing for our final degree show, and other stuff that has filled my head. MY main work is entitled 'Building Hope' and there seems to be a dearth of hope at the moment, I thought I'd sh
Lovely to be at the opening of the @oldparcelsofficeartspace Open yesterday. And great to find other artists using text in their work, including @ellie_clewlow_studio and @k.drakeart I’ve also included a photo of Ethel by @maryannstevensartis
Taking Hope out into the world

Taking Hope out into the world

Mary Whitehouse
Activist textile art, Activism, Patchwork & Quilting,

After spending months making Building Hope, it finally got to hang in a lovely exhibition space at Bradford College. To begin with I didn’t know what to think about it, I had been with it so long.

However as more people came to see the exhibition and I had the privilege of talking to some of them about the work I began to appreciate it again.

As I explained my thinking, I was encouraged by visitors to believe that this was carrying an important message.

The work was made using a traditional quilting technique, mosaic patchwork, also called English paper piecing (EPP), though it is certainly not an exclusively English method.

The papers used were newspapers, I selected articles that were triggering my ‘rants’ about the state of the world - featuring the wars, treatment of refugees, fake news ….. This was a deliberate ploy to provide context for the work. Most of the papers came from the same newspaper, The Guardian, mainly because that is the paper delivered to our door. But I did go out of my way to buy other papers, although sadly many are quite parochial and do not carry the international news to the same degree.
There are many mosaic patchworks from the past where the papers tell us a lot about the domestic situation of the maker. Paper was expensive, so makers used whatever was available: there‘s pages from copybooks with beautiful handwriting, agricultural catalogues, letters, account book pages, and much more. All these papers can help to date the work.

One particularly pleasing aspect of the exhibition space was the lighting. It was positioned to produce lovely shadows on the wall and floor.

The message of the work is that we can all help to make our communities more welcoming places with small acts of kindness. Please think about what YOU can do, maybe it is simply to look someone in the eye, smile and say hello. Look out for more suggestions in my next post.

The exhibition has now closed, but the work will be displayed again at the Festival of Quilts in August. Details on the exhibition page.

Building Hope

Building Hope