At the heart of this first Windrush quilt, Rachel’s quilt, sits a powerful image: an elderly woman, her weathered hands resting gently on her stick and in her lap. Beside her, a table adorned with a quintessentially British meal – fish and chips, a symbol of familiarity and adaptation in a new land, wrapped in newspapers reporting the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush.
But it’s not just the visual elements that tell the story. Behind the central figure, I’ve written the spoken words of Rachel, trying to capture her voice against the heavily free machine stitched commercial cloth background. The words explain these fragments of history and hopefully weave together a narrative of resilience, courage, and perseverance. But that’s not all that’s going on.
As you travel across the quilt, you might wonder why Rachel’s face and hands are painted in rich acrylics, trying to capture detail in every line and crease, firmly with us, but her clothing begins to fade away into the background. It’s a deliberate choice by me – a metaphor for the gradual erasure of identity and culture faced by many immigrants as they assimilate into a new society.
I’m hoping to preserve these stories in my quilts, to ensure that the experiences of the Windrush generation are not forgotten or overshadowed. I hope each one will be a testament to their struggles and triumphs, a reminder of the indomitable spirit that carried them across oceans and into uncertain futures.
