Underwear Quilt

Underwear Quilt, Madeline Veitch, 2007

This quilt was made of men and women’s underwear collected from Burlington, Vermont’s North End by Madeline Veitch, as part of the her senior art thesis at the University of Vermont in 2007. In the final composition, Veitch chose to showcase  holes, stains, loose threads, frayed elastic, and other aspects of the items that were added by their previous owners and often thought of as imperfections. Since its invention, when it was merely meant to shield sexual areas of the body from others, protect outer clothes from the dirty body underneath, and add an extra layer of insulation, underwear styles have changed, becoming increasingly sexualized and gendered items which can alter the way an individual’s body looks.