Material Histories is a new mini-series of Making Meaning Podcast with special guest co-host Deb McGuire. Deb is a brilliant historian, specialising in emotional histories of quilting, but she’s incredibly knowledgable about all kinds of things. We have so many overlapping interests and things we really want to talk about in the world of textile making, textile histories and human stories. I’ve been thinking about a podcast co-host for a while, and when I talked to Deb for episodes 48 and 49, I just wanted to carry on talking! So we’ve made that a formal arrangement now and I am delighted to share the first episode of our conversations. I absolutely love talking to Deb and I am sure you will enjoy it too.
In this episode we talk about the things we are both working on at the moment, the narratives and research we are each exploring and where they cross over in a project about hands and making.
Deb McGuire (she/her) is a doctoral candidate, researching her thesis “Emotional Journeys: The British Quilt in Space and Time, 1770–1939” at London College of Fashion and co-director of the research and heritage project Within The Frame with Dr Jess Bailey. McGuire’s research explores histories of emotion, memory and inheritance through the material culture and practices of domestic quilt making. Her recent research into the quilters of the North Country has been published in the journal Quilt Studies and forms a chapter of Inheriting the Family: Objects, Identities and Emotions edited by Katie Barclay et al., published by Bloomsbury in March 2025. She is a creative maker, melding academic history with recreative methods to inform both her research and her creative practice. She is an advisor to the accredited The Quilt Collection, York; writes a regular column for The Quilter magazine; and is a vernacular hand quilter, working at her Victorian, Welsh quilt frame.
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