Hatched, Matched, Dispatched – & Patched!  This major exhibition, exploring how textiles are interwoven with the stories of people’s lives opened at the American Museum in Britain. The exhibition runs until 1 November 2015.

This exhibition brings together extraordinary textile treasures that commemorate family milestones — births, marriages, and deaths.  It features historic quilts as well as exquisite costumes and other treasures, many of which have been passed down from one generation to the next. In an era of disposable fashion and memories that fade on social media, it is wonderful to hear the stories behind carefully crafted pieces that have been cherished and conserved. The objects are intrinsically beautiful, but the human-interest stories behind the beautifully worked pieces really bring them to life. Curator Kate Hebert says that she has been enormously moved by some of these stories: ‘the personal and sentimental connections, the stories of individuals that are linked with these objects, are what I have found so moving.’

Stitched memories on display include finely detailed quilts made in response to a birth, marriage, or death – drawn from the American Museum’s own remarkable collection or on loan from exhibition partners including the Beamish Museum, Jersey Museum and Art Gallery, the Quilters’ Guild, and the Jen Jones Collection.

The exhibition also focuses on what was traditionally worn to mark these important family milestones.  Mourning garments, heavily beaded with jet, contrast with delicate bridal gowns originating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as christening robes crafted from cascades of handmade broderie anglaise lace.  The exhibition includes the wedding dress worn in 1887 by Agnes Lucy Hughes, the first mother-in-law of Wallis Simpson – the American socialite who almost brought down the British monarchy.

A Whole Cloth Cot quilt, dating from 1700-10 (Quilters Guild, right) is the earliest piece on display in the exhibition and is densely quilted by hand. The designs on the quilt include a mermaid and merman, a sailing ship, a castle, and several exotic animals including a lion and a camel. Other memorable pieces include the Welcome Little Stranger Pincushion, dating from 1821, the Daffodil Dress embroidered for a bride-to-be’s trousseau (which was never worn because she tragically died on a trip to Europe prior to her wedding date), and Welsh quilted burial skirts from the late nineteenth century (such clothing is rare because it is usually buried). A tablecloth embroidered with the names of colleagues and friends of an American soldier who took part in the D-Day landings is incomplete. His British fiancée stopped embroidering the cloth when she heard he had been killed in action.  The stitched decoration remains unfinished, the needle still in the cloth.

The exhibition coincides with a resurgence of interest in sewing fuelled by the BBC TV programme The Great British Sewing Bee, now into its third series, whose judge, Patrick Grant, said ‘there’s a natural desire to work with our hands … we simply love making stuff’. In 2014, 393,114 sewing machines were purchased in the United Kingdom and a number of specialist craft magazines have been spawned on the back of this trend including Heirloom Patchwork & Quilting, which focuses specifically on heritage projects to sew and cherish.