The meditative art of quilting

By Lindsey Turnbull

Multi-talented artist Nasaria Suckoo Chollette is hosting a quilting activity at the upcoming Island Soul Festival, which is taking place on Saturday 31 January from 10:00 am to 6:30 pm at the Holiday Inn Resort, Grand Cayman. Touted as a full day wellness and creativity experience, the festival will be a great opportunity for everyone to truly connect with some exciting and new holistic experiences. In this article we chat with Nasaria about her love of quilting and why the art has such cultural significance.

The art of quilting was born from a ‘waste not, want not’ way of life of old, Nasaria explained.

“Older Caymanians wasted nothing, because they had so little to begin with,” she said. “Old flour sack was saved to sew underwear out of. Old chicken feed sacks cloth, usually blue with small flowers all over, were saved and pieced together to make dresses, old magazines were saved to paper the kitchen with at Christmas time, and the silver or gold paper that lines cigarette packets were saved and wrapped around pinecones to decorate the Christmas tree. Nothing was thrown away.”

Likewise, no scrap of cloth ever went to waste, with small remnants of garments, curtains or bedsheets being sewn together to make a blanket or quilt for the bed.

“Later on, when there were more means, quilting became a community gathering event, where women made decorative and geometric patterned quilts while sharing their lives with each other,” Nasaria explained.

She works regularly with a small sewing group called Friends and Needles.

“While it’s no longer a practiced by many people, the works continue in small groups like this, and It has been a natural process for me to then infuse a lot of that into my artwork.”

Always being a very tactile person, Nasaria said she rarely even used paint brushes anymore, preferring to use her hand and fingers to create with, so sewing onto a piece was just another extension of that preference.

“Each stitch is meditative, intricately tying me to my work,” she advised.

At the Island Soul Festival, Nasaria said she planned a quilting activity, not an exhibition.

“It is art as meditation. So, each participant will be asked to sit in silence for a moment and reflect on the week just passed. Perhaps a happy moment of celebration, a trying moment, a decision they have to make, etc. Then they can then approach the provided clothes scraps and choose four that initially catch their eye, have a texture they like or that fit the mood they are in stemming from their meditations. There will be examples to follow and suggestions for what can be done to the work, (patching them together, embroidering through them or adding an applique), to create a quilt panel that expresses your feelings,” she advised.

A gifted and natural storyteller, Nasaria said sometimes her quilting was done by pure extinct, but for the most part she started from a story she would like to tell and then builds pieces around that.

“Since I am usually working and leading several artisans, I start by researching the topic, for example, seafarers. I find the stories, and share with them, and then we work on a design idea with which to tell the story. Then we choose materials and plan techniques, and each person goes away to complete their pieces. We come together every two weeks to work together, share what we have, and critique. The last part of the process is to piece the works together so that it feels like one connected work and then sew them together and complete the quilting process. These quilts are for hanging as art.”

Next week we will delve more deeply into some of the incredible quilting work Nasaria and her group have produced.