#y2tandes

[gjenkstextiles-blog]

How can Textiles Ecology impact my practice of making?

[gjenkstextiles-blog]

The girl guide Changi quilt

The Changi quilt, was stitched in a Japanese military camp 1942.

Life in the camp was difficult and often monotonous, so prisoners Elizabeth Ennis and Trudie van Roode set up a ‘Girl guide’ group to help the younger members cope with this. The women and children had been separated from their husbands/fathers upon entry to the camp so a women named, Ethel Mulvany, had the idea to create a patchwork quilt covered in coded messages that would be sent to the men. 

Materials were incredibly sparse so the girls would have had to be incredibly resourceful -using whatever they could find; Threads from the seams of their clothing and sharpening needles on the concrete floor. 

Not only did this quilt offer the girls an ounce of freedom from the camp, it provided many men with the knowledge their loved ones had survived.