Good Luck Millie ❤

Continuing with the theme of very little being wasted by the poor when it came to their clothing, Himself reminded me that his grandmother had been a Millie ( I only knew her as a very old lady who'd worked since she was about 13) and that she had saved scraps of fabric all her life, turning them in to quilts and rag-rugs.

Hidden deep in our airing cupboard I have three of her quilts. Thin, soft, gentle aged fabrics with many many repairs. Decades of stitches adding patches or reattaching the quilt to it's backing fabric.

The vast majority of the stitching has been done by an old treadle powered sewing machine however it appears that most of the repairs have been done by hand. 

In some places, the piecing has been machined but the seams have then been turned over to tuck in the frayed edges and sewn by hand.

Two of the quilts have been hand stitched to sheets. One of them is made up of a random pattern - pieces of fabric are sewn together with no planning and it appears the only aim was to end up with a finished item large enough to fit a small double bed (which incidentally is over 100 years old and the one we use).

However, the soft pink version, in a log cabin pattern has been made with better quality fabrics, machine stitched and is a vastly superior quilt. The underside is also quilted but in a simple large block pattern.

Why am I mentioning this? Well Grandmother-Millie used to work in a weaving mill making dress material and we think that any snippets of fabric that could be brought home would have gone into making these quilts. Which would explain why there is such a gently random layout. 

Himself also reminded me about our proddy-hook - a hand held hook used to pull long ribbon like strips of waste fabric through hessian in a looping action. These were then 'crocheted', knotted or stitched at the back to prevent from disintegrating, making out of necessity, warm and soft rugs.

I sat here this afternoon with a brew and gave it a try - using snippets of fabric and some hessian - it is not as easy as it sounds. My hat's off to those hard working women that laboured at the mills for 12 hours a day for six days a week and still had the energy to make the home comfortable and warm.

And my Millie ? - well, she is finished now, ready to go down to the post office, I just have to email the organisers to confirm she is on her way and then send photos to their webpage. I shall be sad to see her go however - she have given me such pleasure.

There was one last addition - a genuine reel of linen thread from a mill, now long gone, from our village,  gifted to me by a friend who used to work there years ago. So, it seemed very fitting to send it away with Millie.

Good Luck Millie, we've both been through a journey to get to this point - thank you :)

Millie gets a move on

During Victorian times, woman - and not just mill working woman - took to wearing a long slender shawl called the Sontag, named after the German singer called Henrietta Sontag who brought it to the attention at that time. It wrapped around the shoulders and the back of the neck, crossed over at the front and was either tied or tucked into a belt at the back. The earliest written pattern found for the Sontag was in the 1860s.

It felt fitting that Millie should have one as it would allow me to incorporate elements of Himself's work in textiles. The hessian itself originated from India, transported to Forfar in Scotland and then down to the textile mills in the northern England. The wools are 100% British wools from mills in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. So a rough and hardworking Sontag was made for Millie, to keep from being cold in the linen mills during chilly early starts.

Her skirt was given a patch - using a snip of linen left from cutting out the pattern, it felt right to use every last scrap, then simple boro mending was applied - to allow it to be both functional and decorative.

The original fabric doll had printed hair ribbons holding her plaits back. However, once the body was sewn and stuffed, these once prominent ribbons seemed to flatten out - so strips of red fabric were retrieved from the snippety-bits-basket and attached. Ribbons were very expensive and so would have been precious and worn with pride and love.

The working mill woman would have had a simple working style of chatelaine belt, not decorative but a purely functional version where all the tools of the trade were hung and in this case a whistle which would have been used to be able to be heard above the clatter of the weaving machines. Most mills were several stories high and the noise would have been almost unbearable. Millies learnt to lip read so they could communicate during the long working day which usually started at 6am, finishing at 6pm with an hour for lunch. 

Aprons were not just the domain of the working class, nearly everyone had some form of pinafore or apron to protect their clothing. With needing to protect the few items of clothing they had not just from wear and tear but from general dirt, a protective pinny or apron was worn by both women and men, rich and poor alike.

Time marches on, Millie has a date to keep and I have to make sure she keeps it ... 💙
 

What Millie did next

Having painted what I could, Millie lay out on my work-desk overnight to allow the paint to fully dry.

As I mentioned yesterday, with reference to the lack of poor or working class clothes in museums, it made me think on my favourite form of slow-sew stitching -  Japanese Boro ( ぼろ) mending. It is derived from the word boroboro meaning tattered or repaired. The mended cloth then, over years, develops a wonderful beauty and history - each one having a unique story with patches being added and reinforced by simple stitches.

I have been using boro mending on work jeans for Himself and decorate my clothing as well as fabric journal covers. So, I decided to gently include boro into Millie's skirt. Linking mending with embellishment to create an object of 'impermanence and imperfection' yet functional and beautiful leads to another traditional Japanese aesthetic - Wabi sabi' - which is used to describe the appreciation the beauty of the imperfect and incomplete.

One of the many hazards (and there were many) of working in a textile mill before present day health and safety legislation, was the exposure of mill workers to cotton dust which to respiratory disorders with some progressing on to some fatal lung diseases.

Himself is a modern day textile worker and despite wearing a mask with filters is still is affected by cotton dust although thankfully no way near the extent of the unprotected woman who laboured at the linen weaving machines.

So - stitching this doll is also my way of not just acknowledging the hardship and and hard working Millies, but also present day textile workers here and around the world.

The making of Millie

 A few weeks ago, I tentatively applied to be part of a textile exhibition (I know - a little preemptive of me you will think seeing I have only really started sewing since lockdown....) There were some criteria - quite specific ones. None of which I filled ..... so instead I wrote how the theme of the exhibition still affected us today - specifically Himself ** , I then pressed submit and hoped that I might be considered.

The beginning of this week not only started with a Monday but it was accompanied by a thud of post through the door. I had been accepted and I had two weeks to complete my exhibit.

Meet my Making Millie - a linen doll designed to celebrate and to acknowledge the working women in the linen industry and the hardship and health hazards they had to endure.

Printed on a linen tea towel - still made in the original mills of Scotland and Ireland - Millie is fabric doll waiting to be decorated and sewn together then posted back to Scotland where she will be part of the display.

It did not take long for me to decide to paint directly onto the fabric before cutting out, then once dry, to work in thread onto the painted areas building up detail.

Over the course of a couple of days, I gave the black and white linen print layers of colour - I very quickly learnt that linen does not behave like paper! Which is kind of obvious however, I still, even with careful addition of paint or water found that the fabric disregarded my caution giving me 'interesting' marks and patterning.

However, after possibly a third mug of tea and a severe looking at and probably a dozen sighs and furrowed brows, the linen and I came to an understanding and we began to cooperate.

I did a little research on line to see if I could find out a little more about fabrics and textures of clothing worn by the working class women however unsurprisingly all the photos were in black and white and predominantly the clothing saved and in collections from that era were from mostly the wealthier classes - unsurprising really, the poor would have worn their clothing until it fell off them and used as rags or would have been cut down to make children's clothing, leaving very little left. 

This thought - of clothing being used until it was no longer usable struck a cord with me - directing me towards the next stage of Making Millie ..... more to come.

 

 **.. and why specifically Himself? I'll explain later.

Drifting mists

Saturday was a strange soft grey translucent sort of day. 

Where views were pale and wistful while distant horizons were mere hints of their normal bulk.

Hill tops seemed to levitate above a faded village barely visible through the shifting mists.

As try as it might, the sun only managed to splash a little soft light on the undersides of the cloud 

as it sank behind the moorland hills.

We stopped at our local waterfall - a tall spout which crashes into a decently deep pool.

Perfect for a little autumnal dip (if you are a dilly dog that is .....)

We stopped a while, drank tea and quietly nibbled fruit cake. 

The crash of the water into the pool was the only sound, even the birds seemed muted.

That sign amused us - it seemed to blend in perfectly with our walk - a gentle, quiet one 

where only the crunch of our boots, the splash of the pool 

and the distant sound of the occasional bird song,

all good soothing sounds - the perfect contrast to the madness of the outside world.

 

 

And as we turned off the moor road - I looked back.

Time to go home, warm up and put the kettle on - xx

Slouching

 I like hats.

Fortunately hats seem to like me, so we certainly go together!

As the weather started to cool and I was ruffling through my knitted and crocheted beanies and bobble hats, I realised that one style I did not have and do really like - a slouchy beanie, the type that slump comfortably without scrunching upwards pulling hair or slipping forward on to your face or even worse - go on admit it - we have all worn knitted or crochet hats that pinch upwards giving you that garden gnome look!

I can and do knit, but it is a slow process - and even though I am working on my slow-sew as a form of mindfulness, I reverted to my 'instant gratification' need thanks to a speedy crochet make.  A couple of evenings buried into the settee with the fire, mug of tea and usually a cat, I made myself a soft grey slouchy.

Happy?

Of course!

I will start another, this time in a darker grey or navy blue - I want it for working and having grubby hands does nothing for a soft grey colour!

Pattern?  I used THIS one - simples :)

PS - I hadn't realised how long my hair had grown ..... it is usually tied up and out of the way :D