Twelve people come the meeting. I neglect to take any photos of work this week, only a sole group photograph. Afterwards I walk through Leominster’s Grange and spy my first snowdrops outside Grange Court (complete with its bandaged lion awaiting repair!). It’s my son’s 17th birthday today too so a lot of excitiement in our house as now he is allowed to drive!
The sight of the flowers take me back to my pilot project of The Lugg Embroideries in which 42 stitchers joined me to spend 12 weeks stitching snowdrops and testing my proposed method for these current projects. It was amazing how the work from that small pilot ended up being shown in seven exhibitions in the end, with the last showing of the snowdrops all together at The Glasgow School of Art in October 2023.
The snowdrops had started out as symbol of the Miller’s gesture of remembrance for soldiers that died during the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross when the river was said to have run red. I had come across a gorgeous riverbend on the River Lugg and met the miller who told the story whilst I was searching for a Gospel Tree mentioned in Ella Mary Leather’s Folk-lore of Herefordshire. Seeing the snowdrops today I recall that that the anniversary of the Battle is not far off, its either 2nd or 3rd February and Leather also describes the story of how a parhelion sun was seen in the sky before the battle and taken as good omen for winning the battle.
I think the project arrived at the right time to highlight the plight of the polluted River Lugg when we were just realising action needed to be taken to restore the health of our rivers across the country. This factor certainly led to some of the extra exhibitions of the snow drops and the millsacks embroidered with the River bend.
I’ll have to look at my notes to see all that we discussed in the group today. Some of my pilot project participants have joined me in this Stitched Atlas project and or in the Walking the Commons project which I am running concurrently; the two case studies being used to research a contemporary feel of rural place. It is quite surprising really how now the language of embroidery does not seen half as daunting as it did when we started the small embroideries and used templates to stitch snowdrops. It now feels much freer and more experiemental and I feel very lucky to have the people in the two groups who are researching with me.
The Stitched Atlas 