So, this isn’t fast fashion and it has taken longer than anticipated but we are ready to move to the next stage of the project. We have the stories of ‘here’ – the interview material in which people have told us about their intimate relationships to their clothes – and we have some stories of ‘there’ – glimpses into the lives of some of the people who make our clothes.
Making a quilt, in which each patchwork square represents a story of ‘here’ or a story of ‘there’, will literally sew these stories together and show the intimate connections between ‘here and there’. We want to make ‘here and there’ one body. We will make the quilt entirely out of material recycled from discarded clothes so that the relationships of the global garment industry are physically embodied in the fabric of the quilt. Only the embroidery and sewing thread will not necessarily be recycled.
I have started on the first square – I thought we should start with Woolf as she has provided the tag-line to the project:
Embroidery is a slow process, even really wonky embroidery.
The fabric is from a pair of wide-leg trousers, made in Turkey and, originally, from Laura Ashley. I bought them for £5.99 in my local Oxfam several years ago and they have been sitting in a wardrobe drawer pretty much ever since. In my head they were going to be Hollywood Golden Age Sylph, when teamed with a black turtle-neck, but when put on they were more is-that-a -camel-toe-and-will-I-even-be-able-to-sit-down? Oh the chagrin of clothes dreams versus clothes reality.
There is plenty of material in the trousers – enough for about six 10″X10″ squares, hopefully. The viscose/linen mix is a good base for embroidery – firm but not too bulky – even for a novice embroiderer like me. Apart from the adornment of a single cardigan, and biting off more than I could chew with a beautiful book of Chinese embroidery stencils last summer (I have started but not finished a small peony), I realise, I have not embroidered since my third year at junior school, when I had to learn and practice various stitches on what ended up as a very grubby and creased set of table mats.
So, what has this foray into writing with yarn and a needle taught me so far?
- It is so s l o w. The 13 words that I have embroidered so far have taken me over a week – not of continual sewing, obviously – but of off-and-on, picking it up when I have a spare moment, which is how domestic textile activities are supposed to work in order for them to be enjoyable rather than stressful. And I’m not even half-way through the full quotation. 18 words to go!
- I don’t think I am a natural embroiderer in the way that I am a natural knitter or crocheter. Just looking at the picture above I can see the ghosts of table mats past. Embroidery is what all the vintage magazines from the start of the twentieth century call ‘dainty’ or ‘fancy’ work, as opposed to practical stitching. I’m clearly not cut out for dainty work.
- I am getting better, though. I can see why girls were made to embroider samplers as a way of instilling personal discipline. The sheer frustration of the thread breaking, knotting or tangling or having to unpick stitches that form indecipherable squiggles rather than recognisable letters makes you take care to control your thread and fabric. And there is a real thrill when I form a letter elegantly – I look at the sweep of that opening ‘V’ with some pride, whereas the ‘ff’ in ‘offices’ is quite distressing. If I had ever been set to my ‘dainty’ work in some Victorian or Edwardian schoolroom I wonder whether I would have been a disciplined stitcher of neat curlicues in cross and chain stitch, a shame-faced hider of some sweaty, balled-up rag or, I like to hope, a renegade maker of subversive stitches, slyly picking out phrases like ‘A girl with a needle is as potent as any man with a pen’ in her pastel palette. V Woolf would have been proud.
- Never use cross stitch to embroider letters. Why oh why oh why didn’t I google ‘best stitches for embroidering letters’ BEFORE I started this square. By the end of ‘Trifles’ I realised how laborious this was going to be. On my next square I will be experimenting with stem or split stitch. I will become an efficient stitcher of words.
- However disciplined a stitcher you are it is in the very nature of thread that it tends to tangles as soon as you start to work with it. And that is something that is at the heart of this project, I think. The relationships of consumers ‘here’ and garment workers ‘there’ is tangled and knotted and liable to fraying and breaking. Any fabric where you only see the perfect, disciplined surface does not tell the whole story, which is why I’m happy that my square has both the beauty and the difficulty of stitching on it. There is always a tension between the two and I don’t mind that the back of my square is such a tangled mess.
I aim to finish this square by the end of the week and will post the finished thing. I’m already planning my first ‘here’ square which will involve appliqué! ‘I like to wear dresses…on ships…at night’. I have an amazing scrap of midnight blue fabric with sequins on it for the sea, from a dress that my daughter bought in a charity shop that she transformed into a skirt.