‘Poetry quilt’ aimed at tackling loneliness in Islington

Dozens of poignant words, hundreds of scraps of materials and thousands of painstaking stitches have been brought together in a six-month labour of love.

Women attending the Stuart Low Trust have just completed their “poetry quilt” – a riot of colour with the compositions of 15 budding poets.

The poems include a tale of a woman being saved from a train-track suicide, an ode to the sounds of the sea, and a manifesto claiming that a perfect world is vastly inferior to one that is “flawed, with hips swaying with personality”.

The quilt was made as part of a project that aimed to tackle loneliness and isolation among people with mental health problems by getting them to take part in creative activities.

In total around 40 people, mainly women, did the sewing and wrote the poems.

Steph Horak, who co-ordinated the project for the trust, said: “The idea is to give people something to do on winter mornings when it is hardest to get out of the house.

“Every week about four or five people would be there sewing away. It’s such a relaxing activity.”

Miss Horak now aims to take the quilt on a tour of mental health organisations and libraries.

The project was funded by the philanthropic campaign Islington Giving.