A lot of work in porgress and completed pieces were brought along this week. Julia delights us with her sketch book of apple folklore,; shje is researching trees and apples. She tells us about the tree alphabet called the Ogham Alphabet.
Ali hands in this delightful Autumn piece
Ann has started to work on her piece for the winter page
Annie has started her page with its map of Leominster and shares with us The Watkins Book of English Folktales.
She has also stitched these dance diagrams as in Leather’s book. Mary kindly offers to teach us some dances on 5th February.
Mary has embroidered these dancers from the ilustrations in Old Meg of Herefordshire that Ann had previously brought in. This small book was originally published in 1609 and is a record of morris dancing where the twelve dancers were said to be over 100 years old each! (One that falls over at the end of the dance is described as a ‘”nimble-legd old gallant” and “his fellowes are of such little strength, that all their Armes are put under him (as Leauers) to lift him vp, yet the good olde boyes cannot set him on his feete.” Old Meg is a short form of old Margaret which the book title suggests will become a Mayd-Marian.
Our Meg had been busy embroidering figures to display the transmission of traditional music and song from adults to children, as she imagined it happened in the time of Ella Mary Leather.
She is also stitching more famous or well known figures from Ella Mary Leather’s book and the illustrations on the cover of Lavender Jones biography of Ella Mary Leather called ‘A Nest of Singing Birds’.
Caroline G is starting to put together her atlas page of the story of the spectral voyage on the River Wye
Helen is weaving and stitching the movements of the Scottish Queen found at Bacho Hill. She cleverly uses running, chain and arrow stitches to tell the story of the Queens captivity, and being pursued by the Welsh.
Maggie C. is struck by how many lion’s there are in Leominster and also present in The town’s origin tale which she is invetigating and reimagining at the site of the two river’s meeting. She plans to stitch a lion; here is one sketch influenced by one design found in Leominster Priory.
We finish the session with a plan to focus on fairies next week.
The Stitched Atlas 