“Out of the way! We
are in the throes of an exceptional emergency!
This is no occasion for sport- there is lace at stake!"
From Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
I ended last month with a promise to share my failures. I recently “attended” an online embroidery course run by the Royal School of Embroidery which reminded me of my first driving test, during which the examiner took me out to the car and asked me to read the number plate of the car on the right. In my nervousness, I read the plate of the car on the left which was not a good start but was a good indication of how the test would go. I don’t think I was nervous about the embroidery course and the tutor was excellent but started by showing us how to knot the end of the thread using your needle, saying that once we’d mastered that we would never want to do a knot any other way. Unfortunately I didn’t master the technique at all and had to resort to my usual knotting with fingers to try and keep up with the class…
I was unsure about enrolling on an online course as I’m really not keen on computers and mine does often stutter and let me down. Previous face-to-face courses that I’ve done have been a joy, not just for the instruction, but for the people you meet along the way and the sense of comradeship you get from learning together. Of course the big advantage of online courses is that you can join from anywhere in the world and on the Royal School of Embroidery course it was a delight to have participants from the United States. Sadly because of problems with feedback, we had to mute our microphones when not actually asking questions so didn’t get the chance to chat. I enjoyed the course, however I think I will stick to face-to-face courses in future as I prefer the people contact. (I have booked onto a whitework one taking place in Ely.) I do like the sleepy fox we stitched though, but I need to practice joining threads better when stem stitching outlines. I’m not going to finish the floral wreath part, despite enjoying doing the daisies, as the fox will be cut out to use as a patch in a quilt.
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| Sarah Smith's Sleepy Fox design |
This month I’ve been enjoying textiles at several exhibitions, starting with the Textile Treasures exhibition at Norwich Castle. Billed as “a celebration of some of the best loved textiles in Norwich Castle’s nationally important Costume and Textile collection”, this exhibition was interesting for the stories of local connections and demonstrating the personal histories that textiles can reveal. The Corona Quilt created by members of the Costume & Textile Association was a delight with the highly individualised blocks worked together to produce a cohesive whole.
The piece that I found most fascinating was not a finished work but one mounted to show a quilt in progress with the paper pieces still basted. These were miniature social histories with re-used old letters and other fascinating items.
I have just treated myself to an antique workbox, which I will show you sometime, and was pleased to see elsewhere in the Castle Museum the painting of Mrs John Crome, showing her with her workbox which has the same bun feet as mine.
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| Mrs John Crome Seated at a Table by an Open Work Box by Michael William Sharp |
A trip to London to see the Peru exhibition, along with the newly opened Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum was another real treat. It was interesting to see shared myths between the two very different cultures with man-deer hybrids featuring in both. The Peruvian textiles were quite extraordinary – very skilfully worked and vibrant in colour. The bird feather tunic and headdress were exquisite, although of course with modern day sensibilities, we would be horrified at killing birds for this use. And of course, whilst we enjoy the hummingbird images in the Nazca piece, gods holding severed heads tend not to feature in our textiles.
It was actually the Stonehenge exhibition that I found most inspiring. The Nebra sky disc is totally mesmerizing and having seen it I’ve been fingering some green silks in my stash and I’ve just ordered some gold thread…
But the exhibit that I found most personally engaging were the carved chalk ‘drums’ dating from the Neolithic period. Found as grave goods alongside the bodies of children, these are haunting items with unknowable stories but must surely be an indication of the universality of grief.
