Tagged: scrap

May 04

Larkhall Festival

I had a very busy time on Saturday afternoon showing the Eastern fringe of Bath how to make little lavender hearts from what began as an old blanket. This was one of the larks of the Larkhall Festival.

Larkhall Festival - Scrap Heart Workshop

Larkhall Festival larks - scrap blanket workshop

Preparing on the Friday was fun; I was able to watch the royal wedding from behind a pair of scissors, cutting out 150 little individual hearts. Can you see how it influenced me as I compiled my groups of ten? No, neither can I.

Blanket hearts a la royale

Cutting out materials for the scrap blanket hearts

And I didn’t shed any tears. That was just blanket fluff in my eye, honest.

Then I grabbed a load of lavender.

Lavender jar

Big jar of lavender

And a few embroidery threads and balls of mohair (which I like to use for the blanket-stitching, though the latter’s not so very good for beginners as it tends not to behave). I took my trusty bunting (made twenty whole years ago for my very own wedding and loaned out since to a gazillion garden parties & fetes), and Mimi’s fish, just for the company and inspiration (“One day, small child, you could upcycle something like THIS!”)

Thanks to the very capable Polly for helping me out. And to everyone for being so patient while I made my way round to you to help thread needles, tie knots and finish off loose ends. Teaching sewing is fun. It’s such an eye-opener, for one thing. Polly asked one very small boy if he knew how to thread a needle. Yes, he replied. A couple of minutes later she looked back at his needle to find he’d meticulously wrapped his thread ever so neatly around the full length of it. Hmmm. I guess that would be one way to legitimately ‘thread a needle’, just not the one we were looking for. She could hardly bear to disappoint him by unfurling it again. That brought me up short as I realised that sewing terms, like any other technical jargon, are fraught with confusion for the complete novice. We quickly forget the strangeness of language, once we’ve digested and understood it.

I was aiming for this type of thing, but the results were more vibrant and various. Blanket stitch wasn’t always the stitch of choice for participants (even if they started out doing it, they frequently ended up producing something else, even if not intentionally) but there was plenty of personality, and I was delighted to see lots of personalising and initialising going on. The lavender seemed to be loved by all, and children were witnessed ‘losing their needles’ in the lavender box just so they could scrunch their fingers through it again and again. And why not? We were chilling. The needles were reassuringly blunt, by the way.

Though tolerant of irregularities and differences of approach (there’s usually more than one legitimate way of doing something) I find myself driven to correct one thing: tying a knot in the thread behind the needle. This one makes me twitch. I don’t know but assume (can anyone confirm?) that this is how sewing is taught in primary schools when kids work with Binca and yarn. I feel that this makes the yarn and needle behave a little oddly and try to encourage simply leaving a longer thread-tail. Am I alone in having this aversion?

I’ve decided I should get off my derriere and offer sewing upcycling classes. Venue tba, but somewhere in Bath. Do leave a comment or get in touch with me via my email (eirlysATscrapianaDOTcom) if you’d like information about these. Be sure to mention if you’d be interested in children’s or adults’ classes, and if daytimes, evenings or weekends suit you best. And don’t forget to leave a means of contacting you.

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Posted in Bath places, Embroidery, Grand days out, Herbs, Rag, Thrift, Vintage bedding, Vintage fabrics

Apr 11

Wonderwool

Last week I received an offer I couldn’t refuse: a free ticket for Wonderwool Wales at the Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells. Celebrating almost everything associated with a sheep and its clothing, Wonderwool looked like a golden opportunity for me to turn roving reporter*. Everything was included, even transport. So, bright and early Saturday morning I set off on the coach carrying much of the Wiltshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers.

And what a day we had! Longish outward journey [meh], the final third spent hurtling at improbable speed down twisting, terrifyingly narrow Welsh lanes [double meh]. I should really have known by the name that all the roads that lead you there are winding. But it was a tonic to see Wales in the radiant spring sunshine since I usually visit in near-horizontal rain. This was just like the tourist brochures: white cottages edged in black nestling at the foot of brooding mountains, quaint stone bridges (which the coach only just managed to negotiate) arching over sparkling stone-strewn river beds, and plenty of nodding daffodils. It was a relief to finally arrive  mid-morning, with fatigue and slight travel-sickness rapidly subsiding and excitement kicking in.

Wonderwool vista

Half barn, half textile show

The venue was no-frills but spacious. And, yes, true to its billing, the whole place was woolly, even the  information point.

Information Desk

Woolly thinkers welcome

I soaked it all up: stall upon stall of fleeces,  in varying stages of refinement; big bags of roving; carding equipment; drop spindles; spinning wheels; felting supplies; dyeing products; yarn of all types (plain for home-dyeing, or coloured variously as the rainbow); knitting needles; crochet hooks; buttons (outsized wooden, ceramic, vintage); blankets, blankets, and more blankets.  Refreshingly, there were signs urging ‘Please touch!’

Please touch!

Double-take signage

One stall was devoted to all varieties of guernsey knitting, with cute little knitted samples. Every pattern tells a story.

Guernseys

Propagansey's display of traditional patterned fishing jumpers

There was extreme knitting with giant knitting needles so mesmerising that I forgot to take a picture. And Susie Johnson of the Wool Sanctuary, responsible for Kirsty’s cute beach hut draft excluder, had a pretty stall. Jane Beck was there with her impeccable vintage and modern Welsh tapestry blankets, cushions, and now (in a new departure) clothing. I really enjoyed speaking with Jane who is pleasantly straightforward and direct. Coming away without buying anything was a struggle as her stall was too tempting; look out for her gorgeous line in vibrant waistcoats cut from end-of-line bolts of wool.

As you might expect, I had my eyes peeled for recycling and upcycling ideas. I found:-

recycled sari yarn…

Sari silk

Recycled saris

rag-rugs being made from old t-shirts…

Making an upcycled t-shirt rug

Patricia making a rag-rug from old t-shirts

and also from tweed skirts, by Jenni Stuart Anderson… who sells lovely implements for rag-rugging and has written a couple of good books on the subject.

Rag-rug maker, Jenni Stuart Anderson

Jenni Stuart Anderson's rag-rugs

There were knitted and fulled wool rectangles (those these weren’t actually recycled, but nevermind) from Undy Yarncrafts…

Fulled wool sample squares

Felted lambswool

and simple peg looms for rudimentary weaving of  scrap clothing strips: denim jeans, for example. Again, I got too excited to take snaps.

Moving away from the recycled wares, I found these beautiful hand-dyed cotton/silk embroidery threads from Strawberry Seahorse.

Hand-dyed embroidery threads

Hand-dyed embroidery cottons and silks

And I thought these Alpaca socks, from John Arbon Textiles in North Devon, were gorgeous; my picture doesn’t really do full justice to the delicious stripe and contrast heel/toe combinations. John Arbon also has a range of salvage cotton socks made from end-of-line and surplus yarn stocks which would otherwise be thrown away.

Gorgeous wool socks

Alpaca socks, made in the UK

Dotted here and there were pens of real, live sheep. I spotted some angora bunnies too.

Sheepish exhibit

It's Wales. We have sheep.

Punters queued placidly outside the metal fencing for the Wool School. Inside were workshops such as Understanding and Maintaining your Spinning Wheel and Knitting without Needles. I was signed up for Fibre Choice and Preparation with Sue Blacker of the Natural Fibre Company. When the gate opened, we filed in obediently like a flock of compliant sheep. Our tutor unfolded entire shorn fleeces from sacks and had us feel and assess the fibres, their differences dictated by breed, health, age, location (both on the animal’s body and of the breed within the landscape). Sue’s knowledge and clarity were admirable, as was her obvious affection for her subject. It was oddly moving to see that sheep turn grey with age, just as people do. And to hear that stress experienced by the animal affects the quality of wool;  it will become ‘fragile’ – i.e. the staple may break when stretched –  if a sheep suffers a shock, such as a dog worrying it. A ewe may suffer similarly from the stress of having triplets. Sue explained how black sheep go reddish in the sun, and brown sheep go blonde (at least on the tips), so if you want to maintain your sheep’s original colour you must keep it in by day and only let it out to graze under cover of darkness. The fleeces were raw and unwashed and amazingly greasy to the touch, almost as though dubbin had been applied, but this was just the naturally occurring lanolin. It’s now obvious to me that sheep are waterproof, and I wonder why every schoolchild doesn’t get the chance to feel a sheep’s fleece too.

Wool school

Wool school

Fatigue and information overload were setting in by mid-afternoon and I was pretty much finished before I reached Finnish felting. I snoozed on the coach journey home, dozing off some time after we spotted a field of improbably gangly Alpaca. The small square piece of fleece I bought just before leaving the festival came in handy as an impromptu pillow against the coach window. No sheep-counting necessary.

Wonderwool Wales 2012 will take place April 28-29, Royal Welsh Showground, Llanelwedd, Builth Wells, Powys, LD2 3SY. Enquiries: enquiries@wonderwoolwales.co.uk or 01938 820495

*I apologise unreservedly for the quality of that pun.

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Posted in Embroidery, Rag, Textile history

Apr 04

My first sewing machine #3: Julia Laing

I’m delighted to introduce another of my favourite makers to reminisce about her early sewing experiences in My First Sewing Machine. This time, Scottish artist Julia Laing of Materialised.

Julia Laing of Materialised

Julia Laing of Materialised

I first became aware of Julia’s exquisite embroidered brooches via Twitter (I think); her hearts with sometimes startling, emotionally charged adjectives and nouns caught my eye (see image below).  I was soon charmed by the rest of her delightful, tenderly embellished pieces: purses, pouches and textile art created from recycled and vintage textiles.

Julia’s sells via Etsy and will be selling in person at Glasgow’s monthly makers’ market, Byres Road, on 30th April. You can also keep up with her via her Facebook page.

OK, I’m settling myself into my interviewer’s chair, propped (if only in my imagination) against one of Julia’s adorable cushions (which you can still nab from her Etsy store, if you’re quick).

Scrapiana: Tell me about your first sewing machine, Julia? What was its make, model  and colour? Did it have any other distinguishing features?

Julia: The first sewing machine I ever used was a black hand operated Singer. Unfortunately, I don’t have an image of it, but that one on Flickr looks just like it. It was old but had been well looked after and the wooden case had a lovely patina. I remember the distinctive smell, as soon as the case was opened: a musty mixture of wax polish, oil, and dusty old threads. The key which locked the case had a piece of string threaded though it, which was always kept wound through the carrying handle for safe keeping. The string was worn through in places, which added to the well used and loved aura that surrounded the machine.

Scrapiana: Was it gifted to you or borrowed? Do you know its history?

Julia: The Singer had belonged to my gran, and after that my mum used it. I know some of it’s history. Mum told me stories of how, during the war her mother had taken suits apart, turned them inside out and painstakingly put them back together again – to get the maximum wear from the fabric!  I’ve seen faded photos of Mum as a teenager, wearing beautiful 1950s party dresses her mother had sewn with it. My mum was also a great dressmaker. She made loads of clothes for me when I was young, and dolls too. Eventually Mum upgraded to an electric model, which left the old one available for me to use.

Embroidered cat

Embroidered cat

Scrapiana: Do you still have it? If/when you got rid of it, did you give it  away to someone you knew? Do you know where it is now? Do you regret  parting with it?

Julia: I inherited another machine, from my other granny, so then my  sister used the old Singer, and I’m glad to say she still has it, although she’s now upgraded to an electric machine too. I wanted to take a picture of it, but it’s packed away, while her house is up for sale. I don’t regret parting company with it, because it served me well, but compared to a modern machine it’s capabilities are limited.

Scrapiana:So what’s your earliest memory of using it? What did you make?

Julia: My memory is hazy, but I remember using it to make sage green cord trousers for my favourite doll, and then I had a go at altering my own trousers. It was 1979, and I thought it was about time I had some new ‘drainpipes’ as my flares were so last Tuesday!  I was 11 and was experimenting really. I don’t even know if I’d asked permission to use the machine (probably not) but I was happy enough with the results to want to keep on sewing.

Scrapiana: Oh my! I have matching flare-altering memories, Julia! Who taught you to sew? Were they a good teacher?

Julia: Again, my memories aren’t crystal clear. I don’t remember being sat down and taught to sew, but because I was surrounded by a culture of making and doing at home (Mum was always knitting, baking, gardening and painting) it seemed natural for me to experiment. I’ve always been introverted, and was happy to spend hours on my own, drawing or sewing. If I had a problem with whatever I was making, Mum was on hand to help, but I’ve always had a stubborn streak so usually I’d just try to work it out for myself. We had compulsory Home Economics at High School, which included some sewing. I remember making a cushion cover, and then a cornflower blue, wool pencil skirt, which I teamed up with fuzzy purple knee high socks my gran had knitted for me…What was I thinking?!  At school the emphasis was very much on doing it ‘right’ and exactly by the instructions, which has always been a struggle; even now I find the instructions on commercial patterns pretty hard to fathom!

In 2002 my passion for sewing was rekindled when I began a City and Guilds course in Creative Embroidery at Telford College in Edinburgh. It was so liberating! there was a strong emphasis on design and I learned loads of new techniques, including free motion machine embroidery. Although I didn’t manage to finish the course because of the cost and time involved, the teaching I got there was top class. I can honestly say I learned more there, in several months, than I did in the four years I spent at art college. That’s when I became very enthusiastic about working with textiles, and I started my own crafts business in 2005.

Silk word-hearts

Heart brooches: to wear on your sleeve, perhaps

Scrapiana: What did your first machine do especially well or especially badly? Did you like or loathe it?

Julia: My old Singer machine was great to learn on. Because it was operated by hand you could sew at your own pace, so there was never any danger of it getting out of control and stitching through your finger! I liked how basic it was: it only did a straight stitch. If you needed to adjust the tension, it was just a case of twiddling a screw to tighten it, and because it was mechanical it wasn’t hard to figure out how it all worked. It was a wonderful design, which was hugely popular in it’s day. The only drawback was because you were using one hand to turn the handle it made it difficult to guide the fabric through the machine with much accuracy.

Dress brooches

Scrapiana: What machine do you have now? Is it your dream machine? If not, what would that be, if  money were no object? Here you can be fanciful: bespoke colour, extra fantasy features such as tea-making… OK, maybe not the tea-making.

Julia: The machine I use now is a Brother PS-31, which I’ve had for 9 years. I didn’t do a lot of research before I got it; if I had done, this probably wouldn’t have been the model I’d have bought! I was in a hurry when I went shopping because the machine I had been using at the time had an electrical fault. It was going to be expensive to fix, so I thought I might as well buy a new one. I went to John Lewis and the Brother was within my budget and available to take home on the day.

Julia's Brother PS-31

I’ve read reviews since which all agree with my experience – it copes badly with thick fabrics, in fact it often point blank refuses to sew. The tension is very temperamental, and it’s quite noisy. Having said that, it’s had a LOT of use, and is still going strong, more’s the pity! If it would just give up on me I’d feel justified in buying something better. I make a ritual of cleaning and oiling it regularly so that’s probably got something to do with it’s longevity. Reliability is the most important consideration because sewing is my livelihood. I don’t use most of the built-in stitches, mainly just the straight stitch and zig-zag. I often change the presser foot to a clear perspex hoop for free motion embroidery, but that’s quite straight forward. One thing that I’d like in a new machine is automatic bobbin winding, because with my Brother machine I have to take the bobbin out it’s casing, fiddle about with the thread, put it on a holder on top of the machine, turn a knob and then fill it up, which is tiresome if I’m sewing at full pelt! I’ll probably look for the best reconditioned machine I can afford next time around. I don’t have a lot of experience of sewing with other machines so it would be interesting to hear which brands other people would recommend for quietness and reliability.

Bunny brooches

Exquisite bunny brooches, sniffing the April air

Scrapiana: Thank you so much, Julia, for taking the time to share those evocative memories. I haven’t managed to winkle out precise model details for your original hand-cranked Singer, but maybe someone reading this will have one just like it and be able to tell us more about it. Guessing at the age of that machine, I’m assuming it’s possible that your grandmother had it from new? If so, how lovely that it’s remained in your family as a treasured possession! Thanks again.

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Posted in Embroidery, My favourite makers, My first sewing machine, Thrift, Vintage sewing machines

Mar 21

Scrap of the week #13

This week’s scrap started out as a skirt. I found it in a local charity shop where the gorgeous Liberty Tana Lawn Glenjade fabric jumped out at me from twenty paces.

What made it unpromising to wear (dowdy A-line cut) makes it a great candidate for upcycling (that flare means lots of fabric). Most importantly, the fabric still had a huge amount of life in it, with colour that was still very fresh and strong. The chief flaw was a prominent black ink stain,  presumably the reason for it winding up in the charity shop in the first place. This fabric costs upwards of £12 a metre new, by the way (£19.95 if you buy from Liberty) so I snapped this baby up. It’s also an unusual colourway: a slightly salmony pink (brighter than the photo) which I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Indelible stain

Innocent skirt, minding its own business

In case you think it a little unseemly to take apart perfectly good clothing willy-nilly, I feel I should add that I did try to get the stain out first. Dismantling with my trusty seam-ripper only began when the mark wouldn’t budge. Actually, I probably would have taken it apart anyway as I do love Liberty lawn; it’s a silky-soft finely woven cotton printed in tender little patterns (mostly) which is probably my favourite fabric of all time. I have stockpiled several second-hand shirts made from it (like this and this) by Comfy-Cotswold-style clothing retailers. I plan to dissect them without any qualms at all. Just so you know.

As with so many of the Liberty lawn designs, this leaf pattern works really well in small quantities – a little goes a long way – so I’m making various small-scale items with it. To date I’ve made fabric-covered buttons and bias binding (I’ll have some of these for sale at the It’s Darling! Spring Fair on Saturday) and I’ve also made a mystery item. I’m bursting to tell you more about it, but am not allowed. Yet. Do watch this space!

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Posted in Rag, Scrap of the week, Thrift, Vintage fabrics

Mar 01

Mimi’s Fresh Fish

I’ve been itching to make Mimi Kirchner‘s Fresh Fish pattern since I bought it from her Etsy store in January. I finally got a chance to play with it at the weekend, prompted by a Piscean member of the family’s birthday this week.

Fresh Fish pattern

100% upcycled fish from Mimi Kirchner's pattern

Mimi fully deserves your custom so I won’t divulge too much about the making. I’ll just say that it’s a thorough pattern. And Mimi’s experience of using recycled elements (pre-felted woolen garments etc) fundamentally informs her approach, so if you’re motivated to recycle old materials in a way that exploits their full creative potential, you should get right over to Doll, Mimi’s blog, without delay. I first became aware of Mimi’s work when I saw one of her kitty series and was blown away by what she managed to make from a straightforward old sweater. Her latest series of  tattoed ladies, made with dyed-over old toile de Jouy (of all things), is a triumph. She invests such personality into all of them.

I can divulge that you actually get two sets of pattern pieces for the price of one with Fresh Fish: one for stretchy materials, one for regular woven fabric (furnishing fabrics or medium-weight cottons). Both types of fish are well featured on the Flickr Fresh Fish group. I was going for the stretchy version; the fins are the things that need a lot of give, and my merino wool sweater met that brief perfectly. I worried that I might have picked something too stretchy for the main body section, but my choice worked out just fine.

Tail close-up

Fish tail

Something went awry when I cut out the bottom fins – they ended up angled in the wrong direction. I also slipped into auto-pilot part way through and forgot to read the instructions somewhere around the fins, so I didn’t sew the edges together as I think I should have done. This has made them a bit more fluffy and feathery, but I like that. Just as with cooking, the real art of sewing is knowing how to rescue a project when it starts to go pear-shaped.

I cheated right at the end as I didn’t use the recommended felt backing for the eye. Nor did I stitch on a mouth. I could say that I didn’t want to gild the lily, but in truth I simply felt I could get away without adding them. Now that I’ve looked through the Flickr group of fish made using Mimi’s pattern, I wonder if the pale blue cloudy eye on this one doesn’t make him look like he’s a lot less fresh than he might be. He definitely has a distracted, otherworldly, head-in-the-clouds quality which happens to suit the recipient right down to the ground.

Fishy reading

Fish head

What really pleases me is that this fish is entirely upcycled and/or vintage. 100%. Even the stuffing was an old synthetic pillow which had wadded into an unpromising non-pillowish lump in the wash (I know,  I know, the things I hang onto…). I’ve mentioned the fabric (old sweaters) already. The buttons were old (they don’t actually match – poor fish has one eye a little bigger than the other, but don’t we all, and you only see one at a time anyway). All the threads used are at least 20 years old too.

And here is our cat, oblivious to her potential catch. I’ll bet she has this video and song running in her dreams. [Song itself kicks in about 2 minutes in; it's worth wading through all the preliminary surreality, even if you'll be humming the tune for days. Sorry!]

The one that got away...

The one that got away

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Posted in My favourite makers, Pattern review, Thrift

Feb 28

Scrap of the week #12

I’m sneaking in several scraps at once – again. Who wants moderation in thrift anyway? Where’s the fun… I present:

1) A Cecil Gee (previously moth-eaten) 100% merino wool men’s sweater in aqua,

2) A Sisley 80% wool sweater in a moss green/brown stripe, and

3) A Viyella 100% lambswool women’s cardigan in rusty red.

Felted sweater selection

A glimpse of the sweater stash

All were thrifted from Bath charity shops. All have been hot-washed, dried and pressed (where necessary) and are ready to go. The aqua one has that rippled texture which often happens to merino when I attempt to shrink it; it still has a degree of stretch too which limits the ways I can use it. I’ve tried eliminating those ripples by steam-pressing for all it’s worth but it can’t be done. So, much better to find a use for that feature. The striped Sisley (which I particularly love) is reasonably firm but is quite fine. The red one has been the perfect candidate for felting, forming a nice, dense, very stable felt.

What will I do with them? Unlike many of my featured scraps (which still languish, awaiting creative inspiration to strike) I’ve already transformed these into something else which has been great fun to make. However, I can’t show you the finished article as it will spoil a very special person’s birthday surprise. Here is a big fat hint though…

Can you see what it is yet?

Cutting out the mystery project

Come back tomorrow for the big reveal!

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Posted in Scrap of the week, Thrift

Feb 26

Woollyherb

Woollyherb, Maggie Jarman

Woolyherb held by its creator, Maggie Jarman

I was really excited to see my friend Maggie’s quilt (above) featured in March’s edition of British Patchwork & Quilting. It’s in an article by Khurshid Bamboat about the Dulwich Quilters’ 2010 Exhibition. Here’s what Khurshid said:

‘Woollyherb’ by Maggie Jarman kept drawing me back. Maggie had cut small coloured felt squares, applied them on to black net and felt and sewed different coloured and shaped buttons on to the squares. It wasn’t a big piece – but it was beautifully proportioned and stunning.

Unfortunately, the images weren’t terribly clearly reproduced in the magazine, but I happened to have these shots in my camera, having met up with Maggie last month.

Woollyherb by Maggie Jarman

Woollyherb, flat

These weren’t exactly studio conditions: we were in a high-street pizza-chain restaurant and the garlic bread was on its way.

Woollyherb by Maggie - detail

Woollyherb close-up

I love Maggie’s delicate placement of colour, button and stitched detail. Maggie used all sorts of threads and yarns that she happened to have lying about. She also confessed to leaving in some of the tacking stitches (see above) which really adds to the charm.

Woollyherb by Maggie - detail

Woolyherb detail: felt, flowers & leaves

I also love that the felt used is ‘real’ felt – real to me being the home-fulled variety, rendered from old wool garments. And that many of the buttons are one-off vintage finds: a great way to empty that button jar. This would make the grooviest upcycled scrap project and is really quite achievable even for a beginner stitcher. There are no seams in it, for one thing. This qualifies as ‘a quilt’, incidentally, because it’s constructed of  three layers anchored together with stitching; to dyed-in-the-wool quilters these things matter. To make such a gorgeous piece it helps to have an impeccable artist’s eye, and Maggie has just that. As you may have guessed from the name, the colours of this piece were inspired by rosebay willowherb, a wild plant which you’ll probably recognise as a weed in your garden.

I’m astonished and delighted to calculate that Maggie and I have known each other for over 30 years. She was the first person I ever met who had a proper, vibrant sense of colour; she’s is also the only person I know who is utterly unafraid to wear orange. We always have exciting meet-ups: full of fabric talk, colourful observations, extraordinary recipes, and technical note-sharing. I came away last time with a small rotary cutter (thanks, Maggie!).

Maggie has also been known to teach screen-printing and other exciting artistic endeavours to both adults and children. If you’d like to contact her about that (she’s great fun!) or to a commission a piece, do drop me a line and I’ll be happy to put you in touch.

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Posted in My favourite makers, Patchwork, Quilting, Vintage haberdashery

Feb 19

Woolly confessional

I’m doing it again: wearing a charity-shop wool top that I really bought for felting (of fulling, or whatever I should be calling it) in order to upscale it into something else more wonderful.

I must confess that I often feel tempted to just slip on that cardigan or fair-isle tank top once I get my woolly trawl home. I’m often surprised by how much I like wearing what I find. There’s something so deliciously random about the process. Things I buy for shrinking need not be my size, they just have to be made (mostly) of wool. I’m small, so can fit into most sizes, and sometimes the big sizes look better than the small ones. Occasionally, something big shrinks to fit me quite well after felting in the washing machine: that happened with a gorgeous cashmere cardigan. I look for good strong colours for crafting projects, so end up wearing things that I’ve programmed myself to avoid in first-hand shops where my choices are often much more conservative.  I’ve (unconsciously) learned to limit myself over the years. I don’t know why I don’t buy new red woolens, for example, except that I’ve probably tried on the wrong red to suit my complexion at some point, or the wrong pink, or orange, which has set me against that entire chunk of the colour spectrum. As I grow older I’m hoping to grow bolder with colour.

Here’s some colourful wool I managed to locate on a recent charity-shop excursion, though I’m not planning to wear any of it. Mr Green, the tank top on the left, has been cut straight up the middle (why?) so is unwearable, and Ms Designer Stripes there on the right is is entirely the wrong size (too small) and shape. Both will hit the hot wash. Flashy Lord Kingfisher in the middle there is a vintage mohair scarf which just needs gentle sprucing before landing on my spring fair stall.

Do you operate different rules when buying new/second-hand? Have you any wardrobe or crafting quirks that you’d like to confess to? One artist friend, who uses felted garments in her work, told me that she can’t bear to buy second-hand sweaters as she finds them too ‘personal’. She doesn’t mind scarves though. Funny. The personal nature of second-hand doesn’t bother me at all, though I hasten to add that I do wash them before wearing.

Thrifted wool

Colourful charity-shop wool

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Posted in Life leakage, Rag, Thrift

Feb 14

Threads of feeling

Threads of Feeling catalogue, John Styles

Exhibition catalogue showing red woolen cloth heart for Foundling 10563, a girl, admitted 22 November 1758

’5,000 rare, beautiful, mundane and moving scraps of fabric’ is how curator John Styles describes the extraordinary archive inspiring Threads of Feeling, an exhibition of the textile tokens left with abandoned children 1740-1770 which is currently showing at the Foundling Museum, Bloomsbury, London.

Being a foundling was a cause of great shame in eighteenth-century London. So, in an attempt to avoid the associated stigma, a baby’s name would be changed on admission to the Foundling Hospital, and the mother’s name would not be recorded. Instead, a textile swatch (or ‘token’) would be given by the mother, or cut from the foundling baby’s clothing, and pinned to the printed registration form (‘billet’) issued on receipt. As the hospital emphasized in 1745, ‘if any particular Marks, Writing or other thing shall be left with the Child, great care will be taken for the preservation thereof’. Despite the anonymity of admission, a mother retained the right to reclaim her child, and a small textile scrap might be all there was to facilitate identification. Sadly, most mothers didn’t return: of 16,282 admissions between 1741 and 1760, only 152 came back.

Putting aside the human stories for a moment (which is difficult), and approaching this archive with the mindset of a textiles historian, these scraps are very exciting indeed. They represent a rare survival of everyday textiles worn by ordinary eighteenth-century women, forming Britain’s – possibly Europe’s – largest collection. There are about forty different named fabrics catalogued, their variety illustrating that the poor had access to a surprisingly wide range of colourful fabrics, even before the Industrial Revolution. It may be that the collection is somewhat skewed towards the colourful and patterned as their purpose was the later recognition of a child, but the collection is so vast that it also contains quite plain, mundane fabrics. What makes the Foundling archives so special is that the object (the swatch) is united with text (the Hospital’s clerks’ handwriting)  and the two together form the only means we have of identifying many everyday eighteenth-century textiles. The clerks’ jottings include the rather familiar sounding calico, flannel, gingham and satin (though their eighteenth-century counterparts weren’t very much like the fabrics we know today) and the now lost-to-us camblet, fustian, susy, cherryderry, calimanco and linsey-woolsey. The printed billet form itemised the ‘Marks and Cloathing of the Child’, offering an intriguing glimpse of the everyday dress of the period, most of which I can only hazily imagine: biggin, forehead-cloth, head-cloth, long-stay, bibb, frock, upper-coat, petticoat, bodice-coat, barrow, mantle, sleeves, roller etc. Some scraps were cut from the mother’s clothing, some were taken from the baby’s own (caps, cockades and topknots, detachable sleeves). Baby clothes might well have been made from a mother’s worn-out garments, upcycling being nothing new. And a mother’s clothes might be surprisingly fashionable: her gown might be made from one of the new cotton or linen printed knock-offs of an unaffordable and impractical (unwashable) silk.

The display isn’t vast (I overheard some other visitors registering their disappointment) but forms a representative sample of an enormous archive; to give you a sense of the scale of it, the storage boxes containing these billet forms line 250 metres of shelving in the museum’s archive. It took me a couple of hours to look around Threads of Feeling plus the permanent displays, so I couldn’t really have wished it so very much bigger. And I didn’t get anywhere near the Handel collection which is housed in the same building on another floor. But that may be explained by the more accessible lure of the cafe (left as you enter the museum) which does a very nice selection of cakes; I’m sure Handel – himself an infamous glutton – would have approved.

Back to the swatches, some samples contain needlework and embroidery, varying from the crude to the expert. Some are ribbon, a universally recognised symbol of love in the eighteenth century, especially resonant in circumstances of separation and loss (think ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’: a much later song carrying an 18th-century sentiment). Ribbons were the currency of romance and courtship, witness ‘fairings’ (gifts bought at fairs), the subject of the song ‘Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?’ which is played as ambient music through the exhibition (suitably atmospheric, if slightly annoying once heard half a dozen times). I discovered that there were gender-specific ways to tie ribbons: military-style cockades for boys, loosely tied topknots for girls (see below). Interestingly, colours which have since become gendered were not so defined in the eighteenth century; pink and blue were used for boys and girls alike.

Foundling ribbons

Four silk ribbons tied in a bunch with a knot, Foundling 170, a girl, 1743

I visited this exhibition last month and really loved it, though I found that every so often the weight of sorrow and heartbreak implicit in these textile scraps became overwhelming. Each and every swatch represents an unbearable pivotal moment of separation and loss. It is the notes left by arguably the more fortunate literate mothers – or in this case, a father – which break your heart, this one accompanying a pink and white flowered ribbon:

Ann Gardiner, Daughter of James and Elizth. Gardiner, was Born in St Brides Parish Octr. ye 6th and Baptizd and Registerd in the Parish Church Octr. ye 10th 1757. Begs to have Care Taken on ehr [sic] and They will pay all Charges in a little Time with a handsome acknowledgement for the same and have her home again when they Get over a little Trouble they are in: She is not a bastard Child your Care will be most Gratefully Acknowledged by your most obliged Humble Servant  JG

And this note accompanying a 1760 cotton or linen swatch – printed with a green and black leaf on a shelled background – for a baby girl of just a few weeks old:

…She has had the Breast and tis humbly hop’d it will be continued as she will not in all probability live without it.’

Whether one of the stalwart wet-nurses managed to pull this little girl through isn’t told.

Threads of Feeling expo

Striped camblet featured on Threads of Feeling flyer

As it’s Valentine’s Day today, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the heart was just as much a symbol of love in the eighteenth century as it is today. Seen as the literal source of the emotions, it turns up with unsurprising frequency on foundling tokens. There are suit-of-hearts playing cards, hearts drawn on paper, metal hearts, embroidered hearts, hearts cut out in fabric (see above), and even – in the case of one baby boy – a gown cut from a print of heart playing-cards. Fittingly, the only token in the exhibition which figured in the reunion of a mother and her child was a patchwork strip with half a heart embroidered in red thread. Sarah Bender, the mother, who admitted her child on 11 February 1767, kept the reciprocal half -heart on its corresponding patchwork scrap, and ventured back to reclaim her 8-year-old son on 10 June 1775. Alas, I have no picture of this token to show you, nor any artist’s impression of the no-doubt teary reunion, but the token is featured in the small-yet-beautifully-formed exhibition catalogue by John Styles (shown top).

Remarkably, the work of Thomas Coram, the merchant who established the original Foundling Hospital, continues today in the charity which still bears his name – an unbroken thread between those eighteenth-century foundlings and today’s vulnerable children.

Threads of Feeling runs at the Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1A until 6th March 2011.

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Posted in Rag, Scrap of the week, Textile history, Thrift

Jan 28

Scrap map garland

Had a sleepless night this week, so it seemed as good an idea as any to start cutting out map circles at 4am, rather than pacing the floor. Very therapeutic, I must say, along with the two hot chocolates.

Oxfordshire map garland

Oxford scrap map garland, folded

I didn’t butcher any ‘real’ maps for these, you may be relieved to hear, just a pad of writing paper from around 1990, when buying stationery cut from redundant otherwise-to-be-pulped map stock was all the rage. This has been sitting at the back of a drawer for long enough. Heck, it even qualifies as vintage on Etsy! – 20 years plus – so it’s high time I used it. I didn’t like it as letter-writing paper (the ink didn’t quite soak into the paper enough: smudge city) so it needed another use, and the map showed through distractingly.

Oxford circuses

Map garland

My template was a 9cm scone cutter (the smooth top end, not the crinkly cutting end) and, yes, I laboriously drew round them all, then cut them out with scissors, then erased the pencil marks. As an anti-hair-tearing exercise, I’ve done a lot worse.

Map garland

Map garland, draped

It took 44 dots to make an approximately 4m garland. Sewing them together was fun; the crunch of the needle going through the paper was strangely satisfying. I decided to go for what felt like a cartographic red thread (actually Sylko D 45, Turkey Red), rather than subtle white.  Consequently, I think I may have added a curiously straight (Roman?) bridleway to Oxfordshire; maybe I should tell the Ramblers Association.

By the way, these are destined for a male relative with a big birthday to celebrate soon. I hope they’ll lend a certain restrained masculine joy to his big day. If he’s reading this, I’m sorry I spoiled your surprise…

Map garland

Map dots draped over pictures

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Posted in Life leakage, Thrift, Uncategorized

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This work by Scrapiana is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.