stitching wars

I have several projects in my mind at the mo, hopefully blogging my thoughts to myself will help me sort thru and reach design conclusions. I think design is always the weakest part of my work, that plus the stitching of course and the fact that i know nothing about fabrics and what can be expected of them.

Present project is based on a visit to the Leiston Steam museum, we [embroiderers guild] are invited to do a "response" exhibition Spring 2009. I have a small collection of photos and hazy ideas about suffragettes and lady stitchers - can't really call my lot stitch bitches, they are far too respectable, and stout.
I am neither, a fact I have to emphasise to myself in case I become subsumed and start voting LibDem/Tory. They are OK really, maybe some are hiding a wild child within, but these days they wear sensible shoes.

The Museum is based in the steam engines manufactured by the Garrett family from the Victorian developments of same to the washing machines in the 1950s.
The feminist aspect comes from Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, both scions of the Garrett family, who sat down with a friend one day and divided up the jobs to advance the frontiers of women's' rights.




Elizabeth would take Medicine, Millicent - Politics and Emily Davies - Education.

They were all pretty successful, but maybe they too wore sensible shoes as they opposed the wild antics of the suffragettes, E, M & E were strictly suffragists, believing the best way was to be lawful and "influence" rather than oppose the power of the men.

I have a newspaper image of Millicent that might very well translate into blackwork, if only i could do it.

There are also pics of the lady war workers, including their football team, so combined with my pics of the researching stitchers I was wondering if I could construct some kind of Bayeux Tapestry of female endeavour.......................

I don't know whether to have a blank background or make some kind of design of wheeled machinery and spanners, if only for the sake of the museum to whom i shall be donating said piece, as no-one else will crave it.

They do look a patchworkers delight, unfortunately neat circles and triangles are not within my sphere of expertise.

Looking at the Bayeux, which we all know is an embroidery not a tapestry, the simplified figures are stitched in clutches with a kind of architectural arch around them to place them, so I shall try sketching something of the same and see where it gets me.