Author Archives: jackiehmorris

On this occasion of the 150th anniversary of Ella Mary Leather’s birthday, on behalf of Stitched Atlas Folk, I organised an event in Monkland Village Hall to invite people to celebrate her life and achievements. She is relatively unknown outside of folk circles and even in her village of Weobley. I started off thinking it would be a small event but underestimated the desire for it. Kathy Bland helped in discussing it with me early on, alongside Annie Wood and they put me in touch with Rebecca Tully of The Ella Marys, Annie Jones, Leominster Community Choir and The Mummers Boys. Jenny Pipes had previously helped me in an event celebrating The River Lugg in July 2022 at Eaton Barn Community Garden (Save the Lugg : Love the Lugg)  so I was very pleased they could take part in celebrating Ella Mary Leather too.

Stitched Atlas Folk would also like to give thanks to Wendy Jancey of Monkland Village Hall, Carol Lewis of Haven Hops, and food and drink purchased from Monkland Cheese Dairy, Peter Cooks Bread, Newton Court Cider and Weobley Brewing Company.  On the dark, wet night of the event, Monkland Cheese Dairy also very kindly let us park in their yard as the Farmer’s field we had hoped to use was quite wet. Thanks to Graham and Felix for squeezing cars into the Village Hall car park too.  A huge thanks to Bryony and Ben for helping with setting up, food prep, bar work and clearing up. And thanks to Felix for photography on the night. Finally, a huge thanks to all the audience and performers who came along and made it a wonderful evening.

To kick of the entertainments The Ella Marys sang a little ditty they had prepared to gather everyone in after the hop pickers supper.

I then introduced the evening as firstly a celebration of Ella Mary Leather inviting anyone to make a toast with the ribboned wassail cup, and secondly its other purpose to hear the performance of Cold Blows the Wind. This was the folksong and tune collected by Ella Mary Leather and Ralph Vaughan Williams from Gypsy tenor Alfred Price Jones in a Monkland hopyard in 1912. The Ella Marys had been rehearsing this song, keeping the first verse as Ella recorded it and the next their own acapella arrangement of harmonies.

First off, Leominster Community Choir took the stage, introduced and led by Liv, and including a couple of the Stitched Atlas Folk Karen and Annie.

Jenny Pipes danced their wonderful Leominster Knot Dance – a delight to watch

Jenny Pipes then led a dance for everyone at the end …

Thank you to everyone for buying drinks at the bar and making generous
donations towards the costs of the evening. It pretty much covered it leaving out some boxes of drinks left over for next time… Also, a huge thank you for writing your name on the tissue paper – to be stitched on my Monkland page of The Stitched Atlas, bearing witness to this occasion.

All that remains is to say a huge THANK YOU from Stitched Atlas Folk for making this such a memorable occasion. The audience and performers together created a wonderful atmosphere which was the very best tribute to Ella Mary Leather.

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.

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.

Caroline G has brought in this diagram of the Wheel of the Year showing the seasonal celtic festivals and decides to embroider it onto a page. It feels a sif more and more groups are clebrating these festivals, particularly with dancing, be it in groups or indivdually.

I have succesfully achieved these grey and pink colours from a dye bath of rose hips using a soya milk mordant, and modified with iron wter to achieve the grey colour or wood ash lye to achieve the pink. I think the grey will make a great base page for the winter season page in our atlas. Thank you to Helen Vine for the fabric.

It’s the first meeting of the new year. I don’t plan the session apart from the wish to have a catch up and see how everyone is faring in their research. I bring in a pile of fabric from the natural dye session, that people can use if they wish.

I also have to discuss the exhibition we have been working towards as its become apparent that the space we were to have it is no longer available on the terms I had originally agreed. In order to carry out my research plans as outlined to my participants in my collaborative research methodology, I will have to look for another space where all our work can be shown together.

Chris has finished this apple embroidery. Her notebooks showing her research into Bodenham and its orchards are a delight. It seems that apple varieties are very much tied to place in Herefordshire, which I had not appreciated before.

A found tablecloth from a charity shop has been brought in and we look at the folkloric characters embroidered on it, including a mermaid and a dragon.

It’s the last meeting before Christmas and Maggie P has kindly agreed to teach us how to spin, and brings in drop spindles, carders, wool and a couple of spinning wheels. She is a fabulous teacher and we surprise ourselves by eventually getting the knack of it. Rhythm is all important. Lots of fun is had and she teaches us the terminology. We learn that the spindle which the wool is wound onto is called a distaff and Ann says this also pertains to the female/mother’s line of descent in family trees.

Caroline G has made an apple cake using an old recipe so we can celebrate the approach of Christmas. It is very tasty and we are pleased when she later shares the recipe!

Karen has brought in a copy of the broadsheet ballad Dives & Lazarus, she is fascinated by all things to do with this song, and Annie and I love the wood block images that accompany the broadsheets. Often the same image was used across several different broadsheet songs..

Caroline T and Ann give in their detailed contributions for the Autumn page of the Atlas and we all learn a little of the techniques and stitches they have used.

Maggie P is stitching the markings from the coffin lids she came across in Dilwyn Church. They remind us a little of the apotropaic marks stitched earlier by the group. She is stitching them on very fine material and the contrast with the chain stitched line is pleasing.

We are meeting in the Council Chamber in Leominster Information Centre every Monday morning, and this week Francesca brought along an embroidery of the sign from theCouncil Chamber door to add to our mock Atlas front cover. We are using an old Times Atlas with the pages repurposed to bring together the information we are finding out about folklore and songs in places as we go along, and to add in photographs from our research walks.

Each week, we meet around a very long wooden table whose shape I have stitched onto the book cover, and everyone has embroidered their first name onto scraps of Valencia linen left over from my pilot project about The Lugg Embroideries. These are stitched on to the mock atlas cover to give a sense of the whole group.  You can see traces of the printed snowdrop template on these material scraps and I like that this past pilot project which informs this new one, has bled in to the new project in this subtle way, connecting and linking the projects.

Several participants in my two new case study projects were also original group members of the pilot project, so the pilot project helped with recruiting for this research project. I find I have unwittingly developed a ‘Community of practice’ (CoP)  (Lave & Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998). The type of learning in communities of practice has existed ‘…for as long as people have been learning and sharing their experiences through storytelling.’   

This week in themeeting we discuss work in progress, and I comment on the importance of people to place, highlighted by Meg recreating in thread some of the photographs of people in Mrs Leather’s Folk-lore of Herefordshire.

Maggie Crompton reads the group three poems which she has worked on, inspired by the working processes and stories she is noticing in the group. The first is about Puck of Pokehouse Wood whose story and place Caroline T is investigating:

The second is inpsired by the story of a pig seen from a coach near Burghill, which Liz is investigating:

The last poem, Maggie has written after observing all the processes in the workshop on Natural dyeing with plant materials which Helen kindly taught us:

Here are some other photos of work in progress in this week’s meeting:

To end this meeting I brought along E. David Gregory’s (2010) informative text ‘The Late Victorian Folksong Revival – The Persistence of English Melody 1878-1903‘ and I read from it as the group work on their embroideries. The aim is to help us understand how they may have informed the Edwardian Collectors, of whom Ella Mary Leather was one. I do stumble over a few words as I read after having had a huge personal shock in the last week, so please forgive the lack of fluency.

Seven particiapnts plus myself attended today. First the results of the dyeing experiements from last week were ooohed and ahhed over…

Liz has been thinking of the old Brinsop Court and old Estates generally. Below are her results from last week’s natural dye workshop.

Work finished or being stitched today…

Meg informed us about this technique of raising images called ‘Trapunto’. I am grateful to her for all the stitching knowledge she is so generously sharing with us ‘amateur’ embroidery stitchers!

Maggie P has been much inspired by the markings on the coffin lids she saw in Dilwyn Church. They are reminiscent of the apotropaic marks the group stitched at the beginning of the project, but more developed. She also found some interesting door hinges and diamond leaded windows. Below she is working on her autumn page for the Atlas.

Ann is using flystitch to create these hops, and padding to achieve the raised effect.

Helen is researching the story of the 6th century Scottish queen who was pursued by the Welsh at Bacho Hill. She has borrowed a small weaving loom of mine and is attempting to weave a tartan. She describes it as a “snippet of a legend” from way before 1066 when we are brought up to believe history began in England! The Scottish Queen escaped. Helen wondered what the spoken language would have been at that time, perhaps Welsh and Breton, Irish or Scots? Welsh tartans emerged around 12^th century with a plenitude of dragons and Celtic knots. There is no record of the name of the early Anglo Saxon Queen. Helen has also experiemented with dyeing fabrics from an increasingly exhausted dyebath to see what colours could still be attained. Dyeing fabric commercially is usually so water hungry, so this is an interesting development for sustainable making practices.

Maggie C read us two poems she had written – one about Puck of Pokehouse Wood who Caroline T is researching. The other a response to our dyeing experiements last week. This led to a wider discussion about rhythm in music and I shared the ideas I had gleaned from a BBC radio podcast with Peggy Seeger on rhythm, and Caroline Larringon talking about assonance as a technique that helped to make stories memorable. In her stitiching Maggie is working out how to make an outline of a lion who features in the legend of Leominster’s origins.

Eight of us decamped to my house for a morning of learning about natural dyeing which Helen kindly offered to lead us through. We started with coffee and cake but had to crack on with the processes as the dye baths can take some time. I was delighted when Julia made it to join us too, all the way from Shrewsbury, she had brought along some of her investigations into Apples – quite wonderful paintings. Some of the group were less interested in dyeing fabric, preferring to stitch, but were happy to come along anyway.

Before the session Helen and I had pre mordanted fabric, I had some done with alum and some with soya milk and Helen had some with soya milk. I learnt that this process takes time, the slower the better, and that the soya milk is an inexpensive and environmentally friendly option. It also makes your hands feel smooth! I followed the instructions from Rebecca Desnos’s book that Helen had recommended.

While we waited for the dyebaths to work, we discussed out investigations. Maggie P told a story of how she had cycled to Ella Mary Leather’s place of birth at Bidney but then gotten a puncture so ended up walking to Dilwyn. She then realised she was doing the walk that Ella must have done until she left home and married at age 19 and moved to Weobley. Maggie then found great inspiration in Dilwyn Church. Here are some photos of Ann’s and Julia’s work in progress.

Dye bath results five days later

I experimented with modifying some of the fabric and thread colours using a wood ash lye and a few with some iron water. The wood ash lye immediately deepened the colours, a true alchemic process! The iron water was only a week old so perhaps needed to be developed for a bit longer, but it still had some effect.