We recently re-watched the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick in 1968. We were both struck by the strength of imagery of the spacecraft that houses HAL. We noticed that, apart from the red Djinn chairs that pepper the interior, designed by Olivier Mourgue, it is mainly the female characters, that have minor transitory roles that bring colour to the otherwise monochrome interior. The quilt speculates on this idea, using a selection of smaller items of colourful unpicked clothes, like waistbands, collars, cuffs, yolks and pockets that appear ungrounded relative to the notional interior. The curved ‘cut’ that destabilises the composition of the quilt describes the form of the spacecraft that is present in each take.

The other strong repeating element in the movie is the presence of earth as seen through various windows in the spacecraft. Using a collection of deep blue shirts and rich dark corduroy trousers we have made reference to this on the reverse of the quilt. The colours appear as those seen by us when looking at the skies from an airplane window.