Saw the exhibition 'Quilts' on Friday at the V & A, in advance of which I read 'A Widow's Quilt' by Sylvia Townsend Warner from 'The Oxford Book of English Short Stories'.This is the dark tale of Charlotte who decides to make a black and white widow's quilt, 'narrow,you see,for a single bed', inspired by a visit to the quilt room in the American Museum in Dorset.
On the journey back to London, 'in a dreamlike frenzy ', Charlotte plans the construction of her own widow's quilt: the choice of fabrics of 'that lustreless soot-black,dead rook black'; remnants of the black out curtains used in the war, a shawl bought in Avignon,velvet, taffetta, sateen shaping the design of a 'trebbled ring of black velvet hexagons massively enclosing the primal hexagon of white wedding dress brocade. Extending to the four corners....., long black diagonals, the space between interspersed with star-spangled black hexagons not too close together.....; a border of a funeral wreath of black hexagons conjoined'.
She sets to work,soothed yet purposeful,referring to it as a magpie quilt,when her husband,who is still very much alive, returns home to find her busily stitching on Christmas Eve.
This is a poignant yet ironic story in which the elements come together like the quilt to tell the emotional account of a marriage and a life all down in black and white for all to see if you care to look.
