Storytelling Quilt and other props.

I tell stories of Victorian Britain and beyond with this vast quilt.

Traditional hexagon patch used to tell the story of Victorian Penny Dreadful novels.

Crazy patch made from old coats in a patch used to talk about factory workers,

Madeleine Solazzo and Joseph Stacey act out a scene in which the quilt is bundled up like a baby.

Joseph Stacey and Madeleine Solazzo in a scene where the quilt becomes a kimono.

My storytelling quilt in action. There are 20 blocks in the quilt, each with its own story. It would take too long to act out each story so I advise event organizers to select 5-6 blocks that they think their audience will like or find valuable. Those 5-6 stories are played together in a unique performance. Quilts are fantastic props for telling stories and fairly simple to make. 

Is anyone else using a quilt as the basis of a play?

My quilt tells stories from Victorian Britain. A quilt could be made in any number of ways to tell stories about anything.  

What other devices would enable the telling of fantastic tales?

Finding a familiar neighbourhood changed.

Yesterday I drove to an area I was once familiar with. I used to work there and knew a couple of families and where the shops and main buildings were. 

Yesterday it was almost unrecognizable. Two pubs that didn't appear to have changed gave me some idea of where I was but new streets with new names, flats and buildings whose use had changed left me feeling as though I had never been before. 

The central feature of the district was a vast cinema. It was still there, being used as a church, but somehow hard to find and the houses that ran alongside it were gone, replaced by a garden centre.

I wondered where the people went who once lived there and what happened to their communities. The area I was in has been radically altered twice in the last eighty years and the movement of settled groups is nothing new..

I'm ready to write about the experience while it's fresh. I think I could write a poem. The liberal requirements of free verse would lend itself to my observations and I would aim to write it without sentimentality, nostalgia and the wistful looking back to things lost.

There's a story in there too; one that explains my long absence and possibly the reason for my visit.


Have you ever gone back to somewhere you once knew and found it vastly different?

Is your old neighbourhood still the same as it was when you lived there?

Is there an area or house you would like to visit?


I think there's a lot to write about.