Friday 1 July 2011

For some reason, this picture kept falling off the end of my Festival of Britain post.
So here's a post for Kristina - because I thought of her as soon as I saw this Patchwork of the Century in the festival museum.
The Women of the Century exhibition was held in Twickenham in June, 1951.
This patchwork was made by 80 women, without any needlework experience, in only two months.
And I bet in 1951, Kristina would have been one of them. (Not me. Or it still wouldn't be finished.)
There's a square for the NHS and free dentures in 1948. (My granny used to say it was the best thing she ever did, getting rid of her teeth.)
There was blackout Britain in 1939 and a clever design of a swastika, an umbrella and a briefcase for the Munich Agreement of 1938.
There was a couple dancing the Charleston for 1925 and a precursor of the modern baby's pram for 1902. The square for 1926 showed an armoured car convoying a food lorry during the General Strike, which seemed very apt given yesterday's strikes.
In Austerity Britain, no new materials were bought for the patchwork. Instead, they used old tablecloths, airforce uniforms and blackout fabric left over from the war.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is an incredible piece of work especially considering the lack of experience. Your link to the Embroiderers Guild doesn't seem to work, I had to Google.

mary said...

Some of them were very imaginative, Toffeeapple. The link should work now.

scrumptious days said...

Gosh! This is just wonderful.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Mary, it works well now.

Darlene said...

You could spend ages wandering through all of those squares, what a fabulous piece of history. And I completely agree, Kristina would be right in there!

mary said...

I'd never heard of it before, Darlene. I wonder if Kristina has ever come across it before?

kristina said...

Oh what wonderful vignettes!

But you vastly overestimate my finishing ability. Just ask Tracy about the quilt I started last year. Sigh.

K x

Lucille said...

You looked at this much more carefully than I did. Thanks for giving me another chance.

mary said...

I was thinking of you as one of the ladies of Twickenham, Kristina!
Has it been on for a while, Lucille? I'd forgotten about it until I happened to be down there yesterday.