Page 26 - The Digital Cloth Issue 7
P. 26
Like so many embroiderers my early
memories of home involve my mum’s
sewing machine, button boxes, reels of
thread, fabric and home made clothes.
Money was tight and if we wanted
something then my mum would make
it if she possibly could.
Plain fabrics were transformed with
embroidery, rips and tears were
patched and decorated and broken
china was glued back together. It was From my bundles of old fabrics and
my mum’s job to ‘make ends meet’ and quilts, my collections of scissors that
in so doing she took it upon herself to adorn the walls, books of old school
also ‘make things more beautiful’. I needlework samples with their marks
look back and see that this was a role I out of 10, the little tin of newspaper
unquestioningly stepped into myself in cuttings, the boxes (and boxes) of
my early twenties when I had my own old shirt collars, the WWII child’s
home & family. gas mask in it’s brown cardboard
I think that these childhood years box (can we even begin to imagine
where sewing and embroidery were what it must’ve been like to live a life
part of every day life were the where such a thing was necessary?)
foundation of my adulthood passion to my collection of letters and
for textiles and perhaps go some way to postcards picked up over the years
explain why an old piece of fabric with from flea markets and auction sites.
the simplest of darns can set my heart I love words and text and they are
racing. integral to the story telling in my
I’m a hand stitcher. I reluctantly call work. This often takes the form of
myself an embroiderer but I’m not handwriting taken from these old
someone who forms beautiful stitches, letters.
I make marks with needle and thread I love that they offer a tiny glimpse
and I rather like that. Like most textile into the lives of strangers. I
artists, I’ve experimented with many particularly like the mundane, the
different techniques and mediums over ones that tell of nothing in
the years but I’ve gradually let them go. particular except everyday life and
Now I’m pretty much left with fabric, I find myself drawn to letters sent
needle and thread and a passion for during WWII telling stories of life at
hand stitching. home. As I read through them (not
I spend my days working in my quirky without guilt, they were never meant
purple shed in the garden of my home for my eyes) something will jump out
in the village of Roslin, near Edinburgh at me, something that is crying out to
in Scotland. I’m a collector of ‘stuff’ be meticulously hand stitched
and here I immerse myself amongst my leaving a permanent mark of
collections and other people’s stories. something that may have been
Every single item is there because it insignificant and is almost certainly
‘touches’ me in some way. long forgotten.
