Embroidering the Past
My grandmother, my mother's mother, Charlotte Bleasdale, died in 1991, age 93.
One of her hobbies was sewing: embroidery and tapestry. Much of this was in the form of tablecloths, or framed as pictures.
Recently, my mother found this on a piece of material in a drawer:
Amy, who was my mum's schoolfriend and who married my mum's cousin Frank, decided to make it into a cushion cover: here she is doing it.
That was yesterday: by today it was finished:
Now I used to muddle my way through sewing classes at school - I even won a prize once for my hand-sewn buttonholes for goodness' sake! - but I never enjoyed any of it. By the age of about fourteen I had concluded that life, for me, is too short to do stuff involving a needle and thread.
But I really admire those who do, such as when Amytree, last Friday, decided to make herself a new dress, and did.
Our Amy, pictured, can do anything with sewing too: she can make clothes or curtains and recently made a jumper out of wool she'd found caught on bushes, collected, spun into yarn and knitted.
These soon-to-be-eighty-four year-olds are not short on skills.
I love the history in this cushion-cover. My grandmother did the embroidery in the late 1960s or early 1970s and now it's been made into a cushion-cover in 2007, nearly forty years later. I love that kind of thing, that continuity: it seems to give us a toehold on time.
One of her hobbies was sewing: embroidery and tapestry. Much of this was in the form of tablecloths, or framed as pictures.
Recently, my mother found this on a piece of material in a drawer:
Amy, who was my mum's schoolfriend and who married my mum's cousin Frank, decided to make it into a cushion cover: here she is doing it.
That was yesterday: by today it was finished:
Now I used to muddle my way through sewing classes at school - I even won a prize once for my hand-sewn buttonholes for goodness' sake! - but I never enjoyed any of it. By the age of about fourteen I had concluded that life, for me, is too short to do stuff involving a needle and thread.But I really admire those who do, such as when Amytree, last Friday, decided to make herself a new dress, and did.
Our Amy, pictured, can do anything with sewing too: she can make clothes or curtains and recently made a jumper out of wool she'd found caught on bushes, collected, spun into yarn and knitted.
These soon-to-be-eighty-four year-olds are not short on skills.
I love the history in this cushion-cover. My grandmother did the embroidery in the late 1960s or early 1970s and now it's been made into a cushion-cover in 2007, nearly forty years later. I love that kind of thing, that continuity: it seems to give us a toehold on time.
posted by Daphne at 10:58 pm
4 Comments:
I think you may have lost a tiny bit of your toehold on time - it's now 2008 not 2007!
I love the fact that Amy looks like she is doing it all by hand - I would have used my trusty sewing machine, which I realise is probably now about 25 years old!
You're quite right, Ruth, when I wrote this I had absolutely no idea that it's 2008. Mind you, I think I've done pretty well to start it with a 2! Oh yes, she did it all by hand, which is another reason I'll always love it.
Oh, that's beautiful!! I collect old embroidery too, for just such a purpose - I figure if someone took the time to make it, it should be seen and used and loved. (I am terrrible at embroidery, not patient enough!)
Oh the embroidery is beautiful. I wish I had that patience. I think my world would be a much calmer place if I just turned off the tv in the evenings and sewed.
Thank you for sharing!
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