Rather than knitting... embroidery

The idea was that by Not-Knitting I'd embrace with enthusiasm all sort of other crafts that have hitherto been neglected. But it hasn't quite worked out that way... mostly I've been replacing knitting with needlework of some kind.

I finished embroidering a vintage linen tea and egg cosy set (which are still in need of pressing):




I finished a cross stitch embroidery sampler celebrating Tankerton. A year ago, I wrote about the design process in an article that has recently been accepted for publication the Feminist Theology journal. Here is an excerpt:

As I write this I am planning a cross stitch sampler. I want to represent in tiny squares of embroidery silk the place I still call home, the place where my mother lives: Tankerton-on-Sea, with its colourful beach huts, sea gulls, windbreakers, stones, limpets and sailboats. This imagined sampler will hang in what was my bedroom, which we are in the process of redecorating. The room is being rearranged and repainted and, when finished, will no longer contain any traces of my teenage self, now that all my things are in my flat in Glasgow, or else my father’s loft. The redecoration will make it a nice room for me, and other guests, to sleep in, but it will also perhaps increase the house’s attractiveness to any prospective buyers when my mum comes to sell it in a couple of years time, after my youngest brother is settled at university.

[...]

I have chosen to redecorate the room with a theme appropriate to the house’s seaside location, the size of the room (tiny), and that most marketable aspect of Whitstable and Tankerton — beach huts, sailing, oysters, and so on. Yet I have I to admit that I have not chosen this theme just because of its saleability, but also as a way of managing the emotions stirred by the passing away of my old bedroom: in decorating the room in a manner particular to where it is, and with a child-like design theme, I am commemorating my childhood on this beach, my growing up, my moving on; recreating and mourning at the same time. A sampler is a particularly apt medium for this: in cross stitch complex and multi-faceted realities are reproduced in charmingly stylised and simple icons, arranged in a composition that commemorates a place or an event. Cross stitch is also significant to my particular childhood in this house, in which hung my mother’s samplers celebrating the births of all four children, my parents’ wedding, and ‘home sweet home’.

As teenagers, when showing in friends who had not been to the house before, my sister and I would explain all the samplers and other embroideries and tapestries on the wall with the throwaway line, ‘Mum was bored in the ‘80s.’ I suppose there is some truth to this; after, all there was in a marked decrease in her needlework production after she went back to university once we were all at school, and stitching must have been a way for her to stay sane during all those years at home with the children. But there is also something dismissive in that explanation of the painstaking and beautiful work that hung throughout our house—that the needlework of stay-at-home mothers is an activity done to stave away boredom, not an artistic endeavour deserving of merit. This encapsulates how ‘women’s work’ has long been regarded by society: as trivial, as craft, as a hobby rather than an art.

My mother’s stitching was not just a convenient activity easy to put down and pick up again inbetween changing nappies, a quiet hobby that wouldn’t disturb sleeping children. It was also an act of meaning-making, of self-expression during a period of her life when she was not (due to the constraints of family and church expectations) able to express herself more loudly or fluently. It was a way of marking and remembering significant occasions in her life. Similarly, I, despite being a somewhat scruffy and impatient needle worker, plan to stitch a sampler celebrating the place where I grew up, because it seems a constructive means of expressing my feelings about changes and losses I have no control over, a way of ritualizing these important events and emotions.

[...]

I'm not sure which came first - the sampler design or all the thoughts I was having about gender, craft and spirituality, but anyway, here is the finished sampler - thought in need of pressing and framing:

I hope my dear mummy won't mind the academic liberties I have taken in my interpretation of her stitching... this year I showed my appreciation of her in a mother's day cross stitch card I also designed myself, a mother hen and her four chicks:

It was also the birthday of a family friend who is an avid vegetable gardener, and I designed* and stitched him this card:

*When I say designed...both the Tankerton and the gardening samplers are heavily dependent on the designs of Jo Verso. 'Composed' might be more accurate.