Textiles have been part of my life since learning to knit at the age of 4.
I have explored weaving, cross stitch and needlepoint, but crochet and knitting are my constant companions. Many years ago I discovered Tunisian crochet which is a complete marriage of knitting and crochet that produces a wonderful woven fabric. I have a passion for colour and found this a great medium for my designs.
As there were no patterns available for the colour inlay technique I was forced into designing my own pieces. There have been many missteps along the way, but I have learnt a lot. I worked as an occupational therapist in the field of psychiatry for 50 years, and am now enjoying being an education volunteer at the Textile Museum of Canada, such a joy.
The attached picture is of a crib blanket I made as a gift for my friend Doris’s grandchild. You will see a camel in one of the squares – that is a thank you for Doris introducing me to beautiful Morocco and our subsequent 7 trips together! The colours and designs of Morocco have had an enormous influence on my work as you will see from the picture attached below.
Diana shared somethingshe wrote about her grandmother’s wedding dress:
My grandmother wore black at her wedding. She wanted to be different, to break rules, to stand her point, you might think.
I thought so too when I scrolled through the pictures in the family photo album. All the brides wore white, ivory or cream – except her.
Decades later I came to the explanation why she chose that colour: she married a widower.
When my grandfather’s first wife died in late spring of that year, she left 4 children behind, age 7 to 13.
My grandfather remarried in autumn. Doing this he broke a significant social rule of his time: After the death of a spouse a whole year of mourning period had to be formally fullfilled before remarriage.
My grandmother wore black at her wedding day because it was still the official mourning period for her husband. What she did was a kind of obeisance for his deceased wife. No act of rebellion, but one of modesty.
When you look at people’s actions, mere assumptions can lead to complete wrong conclusions concerning people’s reasons and motives. You always need background information, about the culture, the society, the setting in which people grew up, to understand their values and their deeds.
A few days ago, she also shared this with me:
Another, more personal memory of my family’s remarkable “black dress” I wrote about the impression the picture of my grandma in her wedding dress made on me:
I first saw that picture when I was a four or five year old child. I remember very well my astonishment: Brides always wear white gowns (and there were many brides in the family album, dressed in perfect white), so why did she wear black? Since I could remember I felt like a kind of stranger in my family; as if I didn’t belong, the ugly duckling. I stared so many times at the wedding picture of my grandmother and imagined my own marriage to-be also in black. For the little granddaughter the black wedding dress was full of symbolism, in equal measure a symbol for the commitment to one’s own individuality (to wear black when one should wear white) and for the possibility to live a ‘normal’ life even as a stranger (to belong, to be married).
Through my adulthood I occasionally wore and wear the famous ‘little black dress’. Although some of these dresses were really gorgeous, they are long forgotten. I never married, so none of my black dresses could have been as magical as the black dress my grandmother wore as a wedding gown.
A piece of work that holds particularly fond memories for me is a stained and worn potholder –
In the late 60’s and early 70’s, my sister and I threw ourselves completely into the embroidered clothing craze when all the cool hippie chicks were adding crewel work flowers, dogs, fish, feathers and every groovy motif to overalls, denim shirts, oxford shirts, jeans and everything else that was hanging in their closets.
Though I had never even threaded a needle before, my big sis patiently taught me how to get started on an old pink cotton camp shirt. For unremembered reasons, I decided to make a snarky looking black outline of an owl on the shirt, filling in parts of the body with red satin (like) stitches.
Although that first embroidered owl led to a lot of other embroidered clothing, I kept that shirt all through childhood moves, college and beyond, holding it as a talisman of my sisterly bond. Eventually, I cut the owl out and made it into a potholder, which I kept in the drawer by the stove, using it to pull hot pies and cakes from the oven and to grab pot handles when the pasta needed a stir.
Sadly, when the fashion for embroidered clothes died out at the end of the 70’s, so did our interest, so needles and hoops were put away and forgotten until, just a few years ago, I rediscovered the therapeutic value of stitching.
After I started seriously embroidering, I remembered my little owl, and went looking for it at the bottom of the kitchen drawer. It wasn’t there. I felt very sad when I couldn’t find my owl, but I figured it had gotten lost in a move or accidentally thrown away.
Then a year or so ago, while visiting my older son at his post college apartment, I opened a drawer to help him with something on the stove and there was my faded little owl embroidered on the shabby pink fabric. That silly little owl, sitting in a drawer in a Cambridge Bachelor Pad, had been actualized as a bona fide piece of art: it had been loved by another, and kept as a precious (though utilitarian) object.
Here is a photo of the potholder, stains and all:
Since picking up my needles again about 5 years ago, I have created hand embroidered work that has been shown all over the United States and the UK. I have won prizes for my work, sold many pieces to happy collectors, and have lectured and taught embroidery, just the same way my big sister taught me those many years ago.
