An old friend revisited: Elizabeth Parker's circa 1830 sampler

Last week, at an exhibition entitled ‘Frayed: Textiles onthe Edge’ at the Time and Tide museum, Great Yarmouth (more on that in my next post!), I revisited a piece of textile that last year dominated my life and thoughts for months on end! The item is Elizabeth Parker’s autobiographical textile sampler, which was the subject of my undergraduate dissertation at the University of Manchester.  Belonging to the Victoria and Albert Museum (whose online collection entry on it can be found here), the sampler features a 1,643 word autobiographical outpouring by a seventeen year old, working class, nineteenth-century female, painstakingly crafted in tiny red cross stitches. Parker narrates her childhood, abuse in the workplace, suicidal temptations and mental struggles in a confessional and prayer-like manner. Devoid of the moral verses, ornamental borders and decorative stitching typical of samplers from the seventeenth century onwards, the piece stands out as highly unique and profoundly powerful. 

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

My degree was in English Literature, and Parker’s sampler provided a perfect opportunity to bring my love of textile into my work. Whilst the sampler had previously only really been written about as a textile artefact, I saw its value as a literary text in itself that could be analysed and written about in just the same way as one would any other novel, poem, play or traditional autobiography, despite its unorthodox textile form. To put many months of study into painfully generalised terms: due to gendered moral and religious discourse concerning women’s roles, traditional autobiographical writing and publishing was simply not an opportunity afforded many historical females, and especially not suicidal, abused, seventeen year old maidservants. There is a large literature of critical work relating to the importance of reclaiming the voices of women throughout history who, due to their gender, social and economic status, were not able to have their voices heard in orthodox ways (if anyone wants to get in touch re: reading lists I’d be happy to help!) For me, Parker’s sampler constituted an amazing chance to recover one such lost voice and give it the serious literary consideration it deserves, as well as exploring the interplay between its form and content: essentially, what does the fact that it is a textile text mean, what effects does this have on it as a piece of literature. 

my precarious position of study!

At the time of writing my dissertation the sampler wasn’t on display anywhere. Instead, however, I was able to go and view it in storage at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Blythe House facility in Hammersmith, which was an amazing and special experience for me in itself! Unfortunately this did also mean that I was only able to view the sampler whilst precariously standing at the top of a tall stepladder, as it was hung very high up! As a result, my photos are all very close up! I’d also like to give special thanks to V&A curator Edwina Ehrman for meeting with me that day and also taking me up to the conservation studios, which was just fantastic. 

Now, the dissertation totals 31 pages and I can’t really go into it all without practically rewriting the whole thing on here!  So just briefly… the focus of my study was at its most broken down level, I suppose, the complex paradoxes that surrounded every aspect of the sampler. The text begins with the words ‘As I cannot write’, immediately conjuring up a whole load of questions given that Parker is indeed communicating in text (and thus ‘writing’), yet this text is not orthodox writing, but stitch. Nor is it, however, a conventional textile sampler. As my previous post on the evolution of samplers discusses, by the 19^th century textile samplers had become the ultimate method by which traditional Victorian femininity was inculcated: not a site for independent production of text and communication. Parker’s stitching therefore occupies a strange and subversive space, negotiating gender norms and traditions to perform a radical act of autobiographical communication at the same time as it claims not to be autobiographical ‘writing’, hiding in the safety of its textile form, and subsequent associations with feminine behaviour in sewing. 

This sense of paradox is furthered by close study of the text itself. I discovered profound anxiety concerning silence and speech, agency and passivity, and the problems of narrating both personal trauma and confession. Parker is nonetheless compelled to speak out, for the sake of her wellbeing and salvation, at the same time as she recognises this act, and even her own thoughts, as transgressive. Connecting Parker’s act of autobiographical stitching to both the theories of Hélène Cixous concerning the need for an exclusively female form of writing with the body, and the ancient story of Philomela, who after being raped and having her tongue cut out won justice by weaving a depiction of her story, I ultimately argued that the textile form of Parker’s writing is crucial in resolving the tensions and paradoxes discussed so far. The act of joining together fabric and thread in every stitch offers a valuable alternate discursive site where Parker is free to express herself, simultaneously healing and joining her fractured mental state. The fact that the sampler is a textile text is, I found, absolutely intrinsic to the meaning and power of Parker’s communicative act. 

I find the above painfully brief and badly explained compared to the months of research and writing that went into the original dissertation, but I hope it is enough to spark someone’s own thoughts and interest without being too garbled! A nice surprise was that the dissertation won the De Quincey essay prize - meaning that thankfully I can't have been the only one in UofM's English department who thought it was interesting (always a relief) - who knew being a textile nerd would come in so handy! Again, for anyone wanting reading tips on anything from material practices and gender/feminism, female life writing and autobiography, samplers, the role of form in literary texts, etc, just get in touch! 

Bitten by the dressmaking bug... Work Xmas party dress, Jan 2014

Although I am working at the moment, my waitressing job isn't the most lucrative source of income, and practically every penny I do earn goes into a savings account in preparation for "the future". Needless to say, my wardrobe has suffered significantly... in fact I genuinely cannot remember the last time I bought any new clothes! When invitations to the work Christmas party came out back in November, therefore, the last thing I wanted to do was blow my money on a pricey dress that would probably never get worn again! I was also stubbornly determined, however, to find exactly what my mind's eye wanted (Christmassy red, midi-length, peplum with cut-outs, that actually fit my longer-than-average body), for a low price.....

World's most awkward model?

.... After much frustrated internet searching I eventually came to the conclusion I would just have to make something myself - all good in theory - nice fit, lower cost, my own style, etc... apart from the fact I hadn't even tried to sew anything remotely wearable since the strange and quickly falling apart party creations of my mid-teen years..! Nonetheless, I must have been feeling a bit mad that day, as I decided to just go for it, swiftly buying two metres of deep red viscose jersey...

I went with a knit fabric as I was making a pattern myself, and wanted the easy, close fit a stretch knit would provide, rather than getting into the mind-boggling-ness of drafting darts etc. A simple pattern for the bodice was easy to make using my bust, waist and back length measurements (although I think a little miraculous luck got thrown in there too), and similarly one for the skirt using waist, hip, and waist-hip length measurements. 

The front and back parts of the bodice were made by cutting a double layer of fabric for each pattern piece, then stitching the layers, right sides together, around the cutout, neckline and armholes, before turning right side out and pressing. The double layer acted like one giant facing, meaning no ugly hemming/visible stitching and a nice smooth, thick finish that I thought the jersey needed to have more structure. I added an unusual, scalloped-edged zip that I had in my bits and bobs collection to the back, simply stitching it on top as a decorative feature rather than making it functional - it didn't need to be! Then it was just a simple case of stitching side and shoulder seams.

Apologies for the grimy mirror selfies...

Now, whilst sewing with knits means the pattern-making is much easier, the sewing part itself becomes much, much harder, especially without an overlocker. It took me endless experimentation on scraps of jersey to get my machine to the right settings, without ending up with a stretched-out, wibbly seam. Crucial points for sewing with knits that worked for me are:

1) make sure you are using a 'stretch stitch' setting if your machine has one, or if not, use a long, narrow zig-zag stitch. If not, when the garment stretches around your body, the stitches in the seam will pop open and break as the fabric tries to stretch against them. 

2) make sure you use a Jersey or ballpoint needle - NOT a universal one. Whilst a normal needle has sharp edges that cut through the threads of the fabric you are sewing on, a jersey or ballpoint needle passes through the knit rather than cutting, leaving the knit structure intact and preventing an excess wibbly finish to your seams!

3) I found it very helpful to reduce the pressure of my presser foot, which stopped the fabric stretching out underneath it as I sewed. I'm not sure if all machines have this feature though.

4) tension, tension, tension! Have a good long play around to find out what works best!

5) Fusible knit interfacing was a godsend. I found it really hard to find anywhere that stocked it in the UK, until I found the lovely website sewbox.co.uk (they sent me a metre of lovely tartan ribbon as an extra gift with my order and have thus bought my allegiance forever). I bought a metre of black fusible knit interfacing and cut off long, half-inch wide strips to use as iron-on stay tape on all the seams, as you can see in the picture below. It made all the difference, especially where extra structure was needed around the cutouts, neckline and armholes. The interfacing had to be knit interfacing, of course, so that the fabric it was fused to could still stretch!

6) Hemming the bottom of the skirt was done with the help of a twin ballpoint needle. As the name suggests, this is a needle that slots in as one yet splits into two. You then need an additional spool pin and reel of thread, to thread both the needles. The sewn hem comes out as two neat rows of straight stitching on the front of the fabric, yet on the back the bobbin thread zigzags between the two rows of stitching, therefore allowing the hem to stretch. I had debated whether to get into the 'stretch blind hemming' that my machine manual promised was possible, but eventually decided that as the hem was all the way down at my shins, I'd let a little visible stitching slide by... and the finish is very neat and professional looking. 

7) My final, bizarre tip for smooth sewing on knits is one I randomly picked up on youtube, yet is probably the most effective of all. If you pin toilet paper to the back of the seam you are sewing, so the paper lies between the fabric and the feed dogs, it gives perfect results. You just have to tear away the toilet paper afterwards as you would do tearaway stabilizer. I'm not sure why it works so well... but it does!

Top left: my pattern pieces, top right: sewing seam over stay tape with some loo-roll pinned on the back just visible! Bottom: Finished back section with zip, front two layers ready for sewing with stay tape

Once I had mastered how to sew on the knit jersey, and got the bodice done, the skirt and peplum were pretty easy! The peplum was made by cutting a circle of fabric and snipping away at its centre until it matched my waist measurement. Again, the peplum was made with a double layer, and I also ironed a layer of the fusible knit interfacing to the wrong side of one of the layers, all of which gave the peplum that bit more structure and flare. The skirt was just a simple case of sewing up the side seams of my cut out pattern pieces (again, double layer... nobody wants jersey stretching see-through over the underwear region...) 

Stitching it all together...

Sewing the three elements together, bodice, peplum and skirt, was probably one of the most challenging bits. I didn't want to end up with so many double layers all sandwiched inside a bulky seam at the waist, and things were also complicated by the cut-out waist sections, which meant that there needed to also be a clean finish across those sections. In the end, rather than sandwiching everything right-sides together, I first sewed the peplum and bodice right sides together in the parts where they joined, then sewed this section, with the peplum lifted up towards the bodice, to the inside of the skirt (see left). This meant that in the cutout sections the peplum just flowed outwards over the top of its join to the skirt, covering it and meaning that no stitching was visible unless you lifted the peplum right up and looked underneath. There was probably a better way to do it, but my head just couldn't get around it!

Indulging myself with sewing in the run-up to the Christmas party was already far more enjoyable to me than walking into a shop and quickly spending a load of cash, so whilst I know I could probably have bought a much more spectacular dress, I was proud of my efforts and the happiness that making the dress had given me. A nice surprise was that I somehow managed to win the prize for best dressed! I know this was most likely just because I made the dress myself rather than legitimately being best dressed, but I certainly won't complain about the magnum of fancy wine that was my prize! The whole experience has certainly given me the dressmaking bug (I can justify new clothes if it means practicing my textile skills rather than simply spending money) and I've kept on making things from that point onwards... watch this space!

Día de muertos inspired machine embroidered Sugar Skull

Free motion machine embroidery is a technique I used to use a lot during my GCSE in Art: Textiles, a good five or six years ago now. Having then not had access to a sewing machine until I received one for my 21^st birthday, I recently tried some free motion embroidery again – although I was very rusty indeed! Inspired by a fateful convergence of interests, I decided to rediscover the technique by stitching a sugar skull.

A sugar skull or ‘Calavera’ is, as the name suggests, a decorated skull made of sugar paste, that forms part of the Mexican ‘Día de muertos’ or ‘Day of the Dead’ tradition. Stretching from 31^st October to 2^nd November in a fusion of indigenous Mexican spiritual observances with the Christian days of All Hallows’ Eve and All Souls’ Day, Día de muertos is a holiday that throughout Latin America celebrates and pays homage to lost loved ones. In addition to honouring the dead with sugar skulls, other traditions include the creation of bright and beautiful shrines bedecked with marigolds, and visiting the graves of lost relatives with gifts of                                                                                                             their favourite foods, drink and possessions. 

I became interested in Día de muertos by chance really. Having been inspired for a long time by the art of Frida Kahlo, I came across this picture of her holding a sugar skull in the same week as I happened to buy, on a total whim, a fat quarter of sugar skull printed Alexander Henry fabric. 

A little bit of curious googling later, I discovered Día de muertos to be a tradition that resonated strongly with me at the time. Having recently lost my sister, the idea of a national day devoted to remembering the dead in a colourful and celebratory way appealed to me greatly. It has often felt to me like bereavement is something nobody wants to acknowledge or talk about: something to be ‘got over’ or be congratulated about being ‘strong’ (and silent and non-bothersome) about. People seem afraid to bring it up for fear of upsetting you, when often that just makes it feel as though the world has forgotten your loved one even existed, and can be very hurtful. Bereavement is, after all, something that happens to each and every one of us at some point. The notion of openly celebrating with all your neighbours, friends and relatives, acknowledging and remembering warmly your own and each other’s deceased, is something I would find just so comforting and liberating. For this reason, my Mum and I decided to have our own little Día de muertos on Halloween. We had a special meal, laid a place at the table for my sister (another Día de muertos tradition) complete with glass of wine and cigarette, and decorated the table with her picture, candles and marigold flowers. The next day, I started sewing my sugar skull.

The design for my skull was inspired in part by another converging interest: tattooing. Sugar skulls are a traditional image in the Old School style of tattooing, although I can’t seem to find much information on how this cultural transference came about – if anyone else does, I’d love to hear about it! Having got a few tattoos myself recently, all in remembrance of my sister, I was struck by this coincidence, and also by the notion that both tattooing a sugar skull and making one with machine embroidery ultimately has a shared method of forming the image with a mechanised needle. Wanting to keep the design simple as I hadn’t machine embroidered for a few years, and inspired by the strong lines and bright colours of Mexican folk art and traditional sugar skulls, I drew up a basic skull outline and added some marigold flowers, a traditional tattoo-style rose, daisies in the eyes, etc… I just went with the flow using bits and bobs I had seen on sugar skulls and                                                                                             in tattoos. 

Machine embroidery is easy for anyone with a sewing machine. It just involves either lowering the machine’s feed dogs, or putting a darning plate over them, so that rather than the machine pulling your fabric through for you, you are free to move your fabric in whichever way you wish. You will also need to either remove the presser foot entirely and sew with only the needle, or use a darning foot (pictured right), which I find helps give a smoother finish. I also find that you need to play around with the tension quite a bit to find what suits your machine best, otherwise you can end up with lots of loopy stitches! Once your fabric is hooped up as you would for normal embroidery, it is simply a case of ‘drawing with your needle’, freely moving the hoop around as you go...

I had my machine set to a normal straight stitch for most of the time, but also experimented with setting it to varying widths of zig-zag stitch. I found this enabled the silky thread to shine differently, producing different colour and texture effects, particularly on the petals of the rose and in places giving a satin stitch-like effect. 

As ever, I am not entirely happy with how the sugar skull turned out… The shakiness in parts of the design and slightly messy execution I can forgive, as it was my first attempt in years, however poor fabric choice caused me a lot of problems! Whilst I like the fresh, rustic look of the linen I used, it was ultimately too loosely woven to stand up to the heavy, tight machine embroidery without some puckering and distortion, no matter how tightly I tried to hoop it! I’ll put that down to not being able to afford more appropriate fabric/some stabilizer at the time, coupled with always being far too impatient to get started and go with what I had already… I will learn my lesson one day…! For now, the sugar skull will go into my bits and bobs box of what will one day become a memorial quilt…

Visit to the Deutsches Museum, Munich, October 2013

Once again I find myself apologising for not writing for a ridiculously long time. Pretty ironically, despite doing a post in September about the therapeutics of stitch, things have been feeling very overwhelming since then, and whilst I have thankfully found escape through various textile related exploits, the sitting down and writing about it part has rather fallen by the wayside… A recent resurgence of writing motivation coupled with a few days off work, however, means that I am determined to get this thing up to date!

Way back at the end of October, my Mum and I went to visit my brother in Munich, Germany. After somehow navigating the S-Bahn from Germering to Isartor one morning I took a little solo trip to the Deutsches Museum. The Museum is absolutely colossal, with exhibitions dedicated to just about all imaginable forms of technology, from microchips to crystal making, musical  instruments to space travel – it was pretty overwhelming! My main focus and the purpose of my visit, however, was to see the part of the museum dedicated to Textile Technology. Unfortunately the Museum's policy does not allow me to post pictures from its exhibitions, and given that I spent over three hours in just one textile technology room, it is hard to do justice to anything without droning on for thousands of words here... So I will simply try to give a brief overview of my highlights! 

This exhibition particularly intrigued me as it was unlike anything I had seen before. Rather than the focus being on textile artefacts from an aesthetic or historical point of view, the exhibition is instead about the tools, machines and methods used to make the textiles themselves. As such, it offered a very different and valuable opportunity to learn about just how much intelligent engineering and centuries of invention and industrial development lie behind the textiles we so often take for granted. I was able to learn about all aspects of textile production, from the production of yarn from cotton, wool, silk, flax and synthetic sources, to spinning, weaving, knitting and printing of fabrics. Much of this learning was facilitated through interactive displays, my favourite of which were microscopes through which you could examine and compare different types of fibres, and simplified weaving frames that I found really enabled me to understand how different fabrics are industrially manufactured.

The exhibition featured an amazing array of industrial machinery used in textile manufacturing, ranging from the ancient Egyptian to the modern day, and I was awestruck by the sheer size and complexity of many machines. My definite highlights were the Jacquard Loom, which creates complex woven patterns through the use of punched cards that control which warp threads are woven over, the William Lee Stocking Frame, as I had seen some absolutely gorgeous scarves produced by this invention at Sandringham Arts and Crafts Fair earlier in the year, and Arkwright’s Water-Frame, as it was a machine I had been aware of for many years due to many visits to Cromford, Derbyshire, my Grandma’s childhood home and the location of Arkwright’s Mill.

The majority of the machines on display were English inventions, which did leave me wondering at one point why it had bizarrely taken a trip to Germany for me to finally see these things in real life! Ultimately, I can only put it down to the fact that such exhibitions just haven’t been the type I have thought to search for in the past – something I’m feeling pretty stupid about right now! The industrial aspect of textiles is something which connects them to all of us, due to the profound role of textile manufacture in the industrial revolution on our social history and future technology. So, for those of you seeking similar exhibitions in the UK, I have found a few here which look very promising, and which I hope to visit myself (although I am gutted I’ve only discovered them AFTER I’ve moved away from Manchester and the North!!) If anyone out there has visited them, or knows of any others, do let me know! 

Bradford Industrial Museum

Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, Lancashire

Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester