It has been one of the busiest two weeks of my life, which is why I haven’t posted anything recently. First my lovely PhD student, Zara, had her viva. Although this is her oral exam on her thesis, I was quietly nervous as there is no way of predicting what questions will come up. I had prepared her as well as I could with my colleague, Mary, but there is still unpredictability involved. In the event she sailed through it and the examiners loved her work. I am delighted for her.
Then, the following day, I went and gave a talk to the Glamorgan Quilters. They are a lovely group and a delight to talk to. One of them gave me some tiny scraps of Laura Ashley fabric which I don’t have in my collection and which I intend to do something with. Another member brought this lovely bag to show me:
I love everything about this bag. The piece is like a time capsule of what we were doing in the 70s and 80s and the handles are just delightful as is the quilter who brought it along.
After the talk I went into Cowbridge with one of my colleagues, Sheena, who had come along to support me. She took me to a sort of indoor antiques/vintage market with a tea room on the side. I got a packet of Laura Ashley prints, and somehow managed to spend £17 without blinking. We had a great time. Cowbridge is the place to go for swanky dress and shoe shops, by the way. I got off lightly in retrospect with my £17.
Wednesday was my Thinking Futures Day. This is part of a ten-day-long programme of events put on by the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law in which we try to reach people who wouldn’t normally come into the University to hear about our research. I did a workshop on patchwork and quilting and the contribution that quilters make to the fabric of our culture and society. I held it at the Friends Meeting House where Bristol Quilters meets, and we had two wonderful speakers, Harriet Shortt from UWE, and Jenny Hall from Bournemouth University. They were both great, speaking very passionately about their work. I talked a bit about the academic study of patchwork and quilting, and gave an update on my Laura Ashley research. I notice there are a lot of ‘I’s and ‘me’s’ in that paragraph, but really it was a communal day.
I really wanted it to be a bit of a party for Bristol Quilters, to celebrate their contribution to society, as well as to my research. So, we, my Grate Frend Ceri, and I tried to add some little touches to make it feel like a series of small treats as well as an educational day. Ceri made these wonderful biscuits:
The stamp set comes from Lakeland. These were a great hit. I made parkin, which I always associate with Bonfire Night which is when we held the workshop. Alison, Stephanie and Ceri contributed homemade cakes and biscuits and traybakes for afternoon tea. Ceri and I had already had an afternoon making posies for the table, and in the process realising that a second career as florists was probably not for us:
This is the pile of things I had to take in for the day:
We were aiming for amplitude and generosity:
As well as cake and sandwiches, there were notebooks for taking notes in the morning, and cards with vintage fabric and needles ready-threaded in the afternoon. I’ll post some pictures of those separately. There was also fabric very kindly donated by Flo-Jo in Bristol in the afternoon for our sewing bee:
People worked on a variety of things, but the most popular were the little coverlets for the premature babies unit in Southmead Hospital in Bristol. These are 16″x20″ unwadded patchworks which we donate to the unit. The mothers get to keep the quilts no matter what the outcome, and there is always a demand for a steady stream of replacement quilts. They are exactly the right size for a group project like this. Although I think only one top was finished completely, Ruth Case, one of the Bristol Quilters, very generously volunteered for finishing duty.
Here are some more images from the day:
And here is my friend Beatriz talking to Eva, the organiser:
I didn’t take as many photos as I would have liked of the speakers because I was too busy listening, but here is the marvellous Jenny and her quilt:
And I didn’t have my camera when Harriet was speaking so this is a photograph of a doll that her mother made of her in her wedding dress that she brought to show us:
Finally, I spend a lot of time trying to find writers who have something sensible and useful to say about leadership. There isn’t much out there, I think, that isn’t about people desperate to justify wanting to be in charge. They should hang their heads in shame and come and look at the self-managing teams which effortlessly formed, performed and disbanded throughout the day, without my having to ask, to make sure that everything went smoothly. Not least of these were the tea and coffee makers and the washers-up, real unsung heroic examples of distributed leadership. Thanks to all of them:
