Anyone who wants to remember someone lost to HIV and AIDS is invited to Tramway this Sunday to begin making a memorial quilt panel of their own. You do not need to have threaded a needle before.

Making a Quilt Panel takes place on Sunday 4 October, from 1pm to 4pm, at Tramway on Albert Drive in Glasgow's south side. It is free, but a ticket is required. Book through the Tramway website or call the box office on 0141 276 0950.

The workshop is presented by Kate Saner of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership. According to the Tramway listing, it will be co-facilitated by original panel makers and artists, and by Govanhill Baths, who are providing sewing machines and equipment for the session.

What happens on the day

The session takes participants through the whole process, from start to finish. "We'll begin by thinking about the person being remembered - who they were, what they loved, how they'd like to be honoured - before moving on to sketching out a design," the listing says.

From there, it is hands-on with fabric. Organisers encourage people to bring fabric that matters to them, and additional fabric and materials will be available. Support is on hand at every stage.

The listing describes the workshop as "welcoming and accessible to complete beginners". There is no pressure to finish a panel on the day. The aim is to give people the process, the skills and the confidence to carry on in their own time.

Finished panels can go on to join the official UK AIDS Memorial Quilt collection, and the workshop will explain how.

Nor does the support end at 4pm. Govanhill Baths Community Trust, a grassroots wellbeing, arts and heritage organisation, runs ongoing sewing sessions. The listing says these offer participants a place to finish a panel, start another, or simply stay involved.

Why people make panels

"Every panel in the Quilt began the same way: with someone who loved a person enough to make something in their memory," the Tramway listing says.

The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt represents more than 600 people lost to HIV and AIDS in the UK. It is part of a community art project begun in the USA in 1985 by activist Cleve Jones. Scottish activist Ally Van Tillo began coordinating the UK Quilt in Edinburgh in the late 1980s.

Ally Van Tillo died at home on Sunday 30 August, aged 67, less than a fortnight before the exhibition opened. The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership said the Glasgow exhibition and its public programme "will stand as a tribute to his legacy", and that it hopes Tramway will be a place for those who knew him, and those who benefited from his work, to come together and remember him.

Most panels measure 3ft by 6ft, symbolic of a typical grave plot. They were stitched together into larger blocks measuring 12ft by 12ft.

Tramway's exhibition notes describe the Quilt as "an act of defiance" at a time when stigma meant many people died "unnamed and unmourned in public". The people remembered, the notes say, had "full lives, passions, friendships and families".

Last chance to see the Quilt

The workshop falls on the final day of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibition at Tramway, where the Quilt is being shown in full in Scotland for the first time. The exhibition is free and drop-in, with no ticket required.

It is open from 12pm to 5pm on Friday and Sunday, and from 12pm to 6pm on Saturday. The display includes archival material tracing the project's Scottish roots and the documentary film There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

Seven UK HIV support charities formed the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership in 2014 to conserve and display the Quilt. The partnership notes that medical advances have transformed HIV, but that stigma and inequality remain.

The workshop is part of a public programme curated by Glasgow-based artist and researcher Steven Grainger. Tramway is fully wheelchair accessible.

Making a Quilt Panel, Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow G41 2PE. Sunday 4 October, 1pm to 4pm. Free, ticket required. Box office: 0141 276 0950.