Information regarding returning your quilt square including the address is all in the document below. Thank you
collaborative quilt return form
CLOSED!
Thanks for your interest but I’ve now had over 100 people register which already makes an enormous quilt!
I am hoping to re-open this later in the year for exhibitions in 2019, so please keep in touch by signing up to my mailing list, following this blog or my social media including Criminal Quilts Twitter
Alongside my research and workshops at Staffordshire Record Office, my Criminal Quilts project also includes a creative residency in the Fashion and Textile Department of Wolverhampton University. I included this in the project so I could work with students and staff to help develop the creative work and have access to their amazing studio facilities. I am in the process of setting up a student brief for students across art and design to make work for exhibitions based around the information and data which is growing from the archive research. I hope that working alongside a practicing artist on a live project with exhibitions and publications will be a great experience and some exciting and innovative work will be produced.
Personally I am working closely with Senior Lecturer Jan Wrigley and Professor Fiona Hackney on both the practical, creative side and on completely new (for me) outcomes for the project including a symposium at the end of 2018 and academic papers. When I devised the project plan and funding application I intentionally created new ways of sharing the project beyond the usual exhibition and am excited by the possibilities which have developed to share and record the project in so many ways.
I also get the chance to experiment with the equipment and facilities at the University including digital print and tufting, all of which is completely new to me. The screen print workshop has much larger capacity than I am used to as well so I hope that I will be able to make some larger scale work rather than my usual tiny, detailed hand stitched work. I even got to have a go with the embellisher in the machine room on my last visit and hope to use the Cornelly embroidery machine on another session. I was also charmed to find pages from my books adorning the machine room for student reference!
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Gillian and I spent our first full day at work as Artists in Residence at Leicester University Department of Genetics this week spending time observing in labs and extracting the DNA from a banana preparation to testing our own DNA later this week. For the next few weeks were are absorbing, observing, investigating, learning and getting to know the department as well as planning all the other parts of our project including schools project and exhibition.
For me it is a visual and intellectual feast, I’m finding the details of the labs fascinating and so completely new it is somewhat mind-blowing. The joy of this research stage is there’s no pressure to decide what the finished work might be and it’s great to bounce ideas around with both academic staff and of course with Gillian as we begin to scope out how we are going to approach our creative work.
I’m working on a new sketchbook with no fixed aim or direction yet which is very liberating. I am learning – fast- about the very basics of DNA and genetics, starting from knowing pretty much nothing, having not studied any science for 25 years! I’m overwhelmed by the generosity and support from the academic staff already and the enthusiasm shown for what must seem a pretty strange project to them.
My collaboration Interlace with Bethany Walker is going from strength to strength!
In 2016 we ran Urban Growth an exciting community project with 8-13 year olds to create a permanent piece of concrete and cloth outdoor work of art in Leicester. This project was funded by the Joyce Carr Doughty Trust.
Over the Spring and Summer we were pleased to be showing at Jennifer Collier’s contemporary craft gallery Unit Twelve in an exhibition of collaborations. I was also showing my work with Jan Garside.
We followed this with exhibiting at all three Knitting & Stitching Shows in London, Dublin and Harrogate which was a great success. Our popular Spectrum piece grew from 27 bowls to 45.
2016 was rounded off really well with Made in the Middle. Early in the year we were delighted to be selected for this high-quality and well-respected touring exhibition. Our new piece HALO, our largest to date (4m wide) was awarded a prize at the opening night of the show in December.
Made in the Middle continues at The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery until 19th February and then tours throughout 2017 & 18.
After a bit of a hiatus over the summer, Gillian and I have restarted our DNA project and spent the morning working at Leicester Print Workshop making prints using found objects. We will be exhibiting work in progress at the TedX Leicester event on 26th October. 
Following on from our studio session exploring stains a couple of weeks ago, Gillian & I have started work on a new research and development project, inspired DNA using found objects as our source material. Each object will be changed, developed and combined with other altered objects to create a sequence of interactions and combinations.
We are working on a funding application to take this much further but for now we are experimenting with visual representations of DNA through generations. The creative part is fantastic but I realise my knowledge of DNA and biochemistry is a bit sparse! I have a lot to learn and lots of ideas to explore, which is very exciting.
My collaboration project Interlace was recently commissioned to create a new public artwork with young people in Leicester.
Bethany and I worked with 8-13 year olds in January and February this year to design and make a set of concrete and cloth tiles inspired by the urban environment to be displayed at Makers’ Yard studios in Leicester. We are launching and celebrating the project on Tuesday 7th June and all are welcome to join us.
My collaboration with Bethany Walker will be shown in Synchronise II at The National Centre For Craft & Design from 4th July – 6th September.
I’ve recently been having a great time experimenting with screen printing, which I’ve not done since school! I’ve been printing on fabrics to make into more petals for Interlace, my collaboration with Bethany Walker. Our exhibition opens in less than 4 weeks time so there is lots to do….
Along with grey petals, I’m also celebrating the nicer shades of grey on Instagram with the hashtag #50niceshadesofgrey. I’m posting pictures of lovely grey things, when I remember.
There have also been some blues. Made on Monday, when I was really feeling blue. It didn’t last.
Week 7 has mostly involved visiting exhibitions, taking down exhibitions and preparing exhibitions, which isn’t so bad. But there *must* be more needle and thread in the next few weeks.
I’ve long been fascinated by Bethany’s combination of textiles and cement; the contrasting soft and hard materials, the transformation of cloth from malleable to solid objects and the potential her innovative techniques would hold for my kind of manipulated textiles.
Last year I applied to a-n’s collaboration bursary to fund our travel and expenses to develop a collaboration and we started working together in January 2014.
Our aim is to create work suitable for public art commissions, large-scale installations and projects. I wanted to explore Bethany’s techniques and she wanted to look at more organic forms, moving away from her usual square-format.
We started by simply setting a whole series of my textile and paper samples into cement to see how they worked and then moved on to making specific samples to test based on what worked best and looked most interesting.
Plenty was simply scrapped as uninteresting, or not sufficiently exciting to stand out. I wanted to make sure what I made was sufficiently different to Bethany’s existing work too. A new set of samples worked much better and gave us new avenues to explore.
Their success was limited but other pieces definitely worked and we have finally hit upon the perfect combination of form, textile structure, colour-palette, type of fabric and display concept which we are really happy with.
The finished work is a series of smaller pieces; potentially a lot of small pieces, so we are busy making more and more. Our aim is to exhibit the work in 2015 and use it as a basis for joint application for projects and commissions.
Ruth Singer 