The Story Behind The Piece: Textile Tokens

Love Tokens

You have no conception just how much I miss you.

Meet Jimmy & Peggy

‘I just wish each and every hour away, and yet still they drag’

I was utterly captivated the very first time I read these words and I became a bit smitten with the author and her husband. They’re lifted from a small collection of Jimmy & Peggy’s personal letters that came into my possession a few years ago. The letters were the inspiration behind my series ‘Stolen Stories’. I’ve written about my thought and making process behind these pieces, in an article for TextileArtist. org. – ‘From Conception to Creation’. Do grab a cuppa and have a wee read if you’ve got a minute!

‘Stolen Stories’ Fragments of private emotion pinned out for all to see

So who are Jimmy & Peggy?

To be honest I know very little about them except that they are a young (I assume) fairly newly married couple living in wartime Britain. I have five letters dated between 1942 & 1946. Where the rest of their letters are, I have no idea but as they wrote to each other several times a week there must be many! They were both based in this country but separated by circumstance for the most part. I only have tiny glimpses into their story and the rest is purely in my mind. I’m not quite sure why they fascinate me so much, the letters are pretty mundane but that’s what I love about them.

Every-day people, ordinary lives, extraordinary times!

Your sweet voice is a comfort to me

Then 2020 happened!

So then last year happened and like everyone my world turned upside down when we went into ‘lockdown’ – a word that most of us had no previous use of. I noticed that my regular phone conversations with my 87 year old mum inevitably led to her recollecting her childhood years living through WWII. She’d end each conversation  with the words:

‘at least we don’t have bombs dropping all around us’.

I can always rely on my mum for putting my own troubles back in perspective! However these conversations led me once more back to Jimmy & Peggy and their words to one another. Returning  to their letters, so many words and phrases struck a chord with me. This time I didn’t feel as if I was the outsider looking in to their private world, instead it felt like they could see right into mine and were reading the thoughts and emotions that were tumbling around inside me.

So I started stitching.

Captivated by their letters once more, I started working on a couple of bigger pieces inspired by Peggy & Jimmy’s story. With workshops (my income) being cancelled and money being refunded I found it strangely calming and there was something rather lovely about having the time (oh so much time) to work on bigger pieces again.

‘Missing You” Work in progress

Funnily enough these pieces were never finished. They came to an abrupt halt for some reason and I can’t even remember why. With hours and days of stitching behind me, I just suddenly stopped – maybe that was when the gorgeous weather came our way and my rather frenzied attention turned to the garden. Who knows – but they’re in my thoughts again so I’ll turn back to them soon.

Textile Tokens

When the bigger pieces became daunting, my attention turned to working small, very small. I’ve been fascinated by the idea of making Textile Tokens ever since visiting the Threads of Feeling exhibition at The Foundling Museum in London back in 2010. No time to tell the story of that here but that one afternoon played a pivotal role in the clarity and direction of my own textile practice.

I remember standing silently looking at each exhibit with tears rolling down my face, and I wasn’t alone. I’ve no idea how much time I spent there as each piece claimed my full presence and attention. So much emotion, so many stories held in these little scraps of fabric. The stories remained hidden but the emotion was raw and real and felt by very visitor there.

Darling keep your spirits up and just be patient

So I decided to combine the energy of scraps of old fabric – mostly from a piece of 1940s feed sack quilt that was so washed and worn that I could tear it into fragments with my hands – and the energy of Peggy & Jimmy’s words, suddenly so relevant.    I chose whatever phrase spoke to me at the time and stitched it on silk organza and these tiny scraps of homely fabrics. Stitched intuitively with vintage threads, they became my soothing activity – comforting and healing as my heart ached with missing my special people. I picked them up and set them down just as the mood took me.

I gave some away and the others are now pinned into a little sketchbook. I know that they will become part of something bigger but I’m not quite sure what yet. Having harboured a sense of guilt over lifting words out of context in my series Stolen Stories I have a notion that I want to put the story straight and perhaps create a display case containing the real loving energy of this couple.

God bless you my love and keep you from harm

I became busy with other projects at the end of last summer and didn’t do any more until that brutal Saturday just before Christmas when our longed for plans were wiped off the table. Once more we had to re-adjust, re-compose and re-gather our energies.

So stitching started again.

Love Tokens

Having found a level of acceptance again I’ve been spending peaceful evenings, contentedly stitching once more. I’d had a few enquiries about my tokens whenever I posted them on Facebook & Instagram so I decided to stitch a very small collection and offer them for sale.

These ones have fewer words but focussing on love as it’s the force that’s holding us together at this time, when everything that we are wishing for still seems so far away.

My sweet darling

The words are hand stitched on silk organza, on a background of 1940s quilt and fragments of antique French textiles. They’re worn, torn and marked (aren’t we all?) and each one is decorate with tiny stitches in vintage threads. They’re individually made, I don’t work on a few at a time for speed, and they’re stitched with a contented heart in front of the fire, safe at home (with no bombs dropping round about us).

I just wish

The tokens themselves are small – each one measuring about 9cm x 7 cm and they’re stitched onto a square cream cardboard mount. Exact sizes will be given on individual listings. The tokens can easily be removed from the card to display as you wish – I personally love them displayed in a gorgeous Nkuku zinc & glass frame (5 x 7 landscape is perfect).

My dearest

These Love Tokens will be offered for sale on my Facebook & Instagram pages from Thursday 28th.

There are currently only seven available.

The cost is £45 plus postage.

Do contact me if you would like one to makes it way into your home.

I’m so sorry but I’m only posting to the UK at this time.

Miss you terribly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind The Piece: HiStories Uncovered

Ali Ferguson Textile Art
HiStories Uncovered Installation currently exhibiting at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles

HiStories Uncovered

I’m super excited that this piece is currently on exhibition at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles as part of Excellence In Fibers 2017. This is an annual juried textile exhibition by the magazine Fiber Art Now highlighting innovative and contemporary textile art. I was absolutely thrilled to have my work selected as one of 44 pieces from the 1949 submissions to be not only published in the magazine but also exhibited at the museum. I’m even more delighted that SJMQT are using my image on their website to promote the exhibition. It will be showing until Jan 13th 2019.

It therefore seems like a good time to tell a bit of the story behind the piece

HiStories Uncovered is an installation piece consisting of three textile panels and a pair of vintage baby shoes. The original inspiration came quite by chance while half  listening to the radio. I have absolutely no idea what the programme was or what it was about but something sparked my interest at the time and I wrote down the phrase ‘Locard’s Exchange Principle’ in my notebook. I came across it again some time later and looked it up.

According to the website Forensic handbook:

Locard’s exchange principle is a concept that was developed by Dr. Edmond Locard (1877-1966). Locard speculated that every time you make contact with another person, place, or thing, it results in an exchange of physical materials. He believed that no matter where a criminal goes or what a criminal does, by coming into contact with things, a criminal can leave all sorts of evidence, including DNA, fingerprints, footprints, hair, skin cells, blood, bodily fluids, pieces of clothing, fibers and more. At the same time, they will also take something away from the scene with them.

This kind of fascinated me and really got me thinking. If we accept that we leave physical traces with someone that we come in contact with then, of course, we also leave emotional traces. After all we talk about someone ‘touching’ us (as if it were a physical thing) when we are left with a strong feeling or memory of them. I went on to consider that if the emotional trace was actually physical, what mark or evidence would it leave. I decided to follow this Thread of Thought further and see where it would take me and this was really the start of my  fascination by the thought that an old piece of clothing is implanted with stories of the wearer. Are you with me so far?

I decided to work with old garments and quite literally take them apart piece by piece to reveal this imagined emotional evidence left behind by some person who had touched the wearer in some way. I collected my evidence from text taken from my collections of old letters and used old and worn garments from my stash. The letters and garments were not actually connected in any way apart from in my imagination.

I wanted the pieces to be rather ethereal so I chose to work with beautiful old and very delicate silks and organzas as my background fabric. Again all old and used and bringing their own hidden stories to the piece.

Gillie

Ali Ferguson textile art
The making of Gillie

 

I decided that my first piece would give a glimpse into the life of Gillie a school master at a school in Brighton. I have two letters dated July 1919 from Gillie addressed to a Miss Dorothy Ferguson who was a school mistress at the same school. Bought from Ebay several years ago these letters captivated me from the outset with his opening line of one letter:

Please don’t misunderstand the meaning of this letter but I have felt such an awful cad ever since the occasion I was so unwise as to feel very sentimental, that I owe you a few words of explanation, which will probably read better as distance separates us.

I was, of course, completely hooked! The question I’m sure we’re all asking is what he had done to warrant the ‘awful cad’!! My only clue is in the only other letter which is dated five days previously where he declares his love for Dorothy. Again this letter starts with an apology:

Can I begin better than by asking you to forgive me? It may seem hard for you to do so but all the excuse I can offer is that I love you. To you that really ought to be mitigating circumstances.

I think my favourite paragraph is:

Thinking over everything, I can’t really find sufficient reason on your side to say that I must not hope that some day you will become my wife.

Anyway the poor man decided that the way to win Dorothy over was by telling her more…and more…and even more about himself. I was enthralled by strict and uncaring pater and rather flaky mater and if this hasn’t thawed Miss Ferguson’s heart by now then surely she couldn’t have remained untouched by the line:

David Copperfield could hardly ever have felt worse than I.

I love the fact that I only have two letters and can’t pry any further. There is enough information in the letter to find a lot more out about dear Gillie but I’ve never been tempted – I love a little glimpse into a life but don’t wish any more than that.

Ali Ferguson textile art
Gillie

I used the writing  from the letters and tried to be true to Gillie’s handwriting with my own stitching. This piece was stitched onto a background of beautiful old silk organza. Pinned in places, words and phrases highlighted by stitching and offering the tiniest glimpse into Gillies emotions towards this women who had touched him and won over his heart at this time.

Ali Ferguson textile art
Gillie Detail

 

Ali Ferguson textile art
Gillie Detail

Miss Dorothy

Well it had to be done didn’t it? I had to let Miss Dorothy respond to Gillies letters and capture some of her spirit in doing so. I don’t have any letters from Dorothy so I have no idea of her actual response or how the story turned out. Did they indeed marry or did Gillie offer his excuses and leave the school as he said he would if she asked? I’ve no way of knowing.

I very seldom completely make up a story, that’s something that usually holds no appeal to me. However something about Gillie & Dorothy had me captivated and I found myself feeling (justly or unjustly?) rather indignant on Dorothy’s part. I think it was his assumption that what she really needed to change her mind was to hear more about him that got me riled. He definitely hadn’t read ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus‘!

In my head Dorothy was rather feisty and would not be won over so easily. I decided to write Dorothy’s response myself and to use this as my evidence for my second piece. I still giggle when I read over my imaginary letter. It starts:

You bloody, bloody man. While I confess to a fondness for you, your arrogance infuriates me beyond measure. Just when I begin to forgive your presumptions you follow on from where you left off assuming that your only misdemeanour is in being ‘sentimental’.

It continues in similar fashion and goes on:

You cannot see ‘sufficient reason’ that you must not hope that some day I will be your wife? Have you ever once asked me what I would like? Have you ever once asked me what I might hope for?

This friendship is not compromised by your confession of having feelings for me. Are we not two adults capable of having an adult relationship? This friendship is compromised by your arrogant belief that you know what is best for me and when I do not fall at your feet in compliance it is because I misunderstood you.

You, you why is it always about you? Your detailed explanation of your upbringing provides the answer but I suspect not in the way that you were intending.

And it goes on further in that manner and gives poor Gillie quite a rollicking. I can only think that at the time of writing I was having a bad day! I do love the thought that the words of a complete stranger  inspired such indignation in me. Anyway more about the piece itself.

Ali Ferguson Textile art The making of Miss Dorothy
The making of Miss Dorothy

I used a beautiful antique modesty panel and applied the words of my letter to it. It is made of the most fragile silk which disintegrated in parts as I was stitching. This was layered onto a background of old silk that came from a dress lining. This came from a friend’s mother’s house and had clearly been cut off when a dress was shortened from long to short. Marked and worn with lovely stitched seams, it became a prized piece of fabric waiting for just the right project. I was a bit devastated when I used the last pieces up in my Not Just Blue quilts.

Layered over the modesty panel was another very fine antique dress panel and again I layered fabrics and  highlighted  words in hand stitching. I stretched this piece on a frame to stitch, because it was so delicate and in danger of disintegrating completely. I don’t usually stitch with a frame although perhaps I should. I tend to suit my way of working to whatever materials I am using at the time. In honesty I make things up and experiment as I go along rather than doing extensive sampling beforehand and I’m afraid with no formal training in embroidery I am completely unaware of the right way to do things – and I rather like this.

I’ll be teaching some of my techniques that I used in these pieces at my 5 day workshop next year with Fibre Arts Australia and Fibre Arts New Zealand and who knows maybe sometime in the UK if I’m invited to do a summer school or winter school sometime. Big hint!!

Ali Ferguson Miss Dorothy
HiStories Uncovered: Miss Dorothy

 

Ali Ferguson textile art
Miss Dorothy Detail

 

Ali Ferguson textile art
Miss Dorothy Detail

My Dear Child

The emotional evidence for the last piece in this installation comes from a completely unconnected collection of letters. Again I found these several years ago on Ebay and for some reason it took me a long time to be able to open the little packet of small letters and investigate them properly. They felt so very full of emotion that I couldn’t quite bring myself to read them when they first arrived and actually now that I have poured over them I’m still not hugely wiser as to their content. Written in tiny spidery handwriting and dated 1907 they are very difficult to decipher apart from the opening greetings:

My very dear child, My dear child and My precious child

I can make out the odd sentence here and there:

Ever in my thoughts & prayers, My precious child, you are never out of my thoughts

God bless and keep you, I am sending you some of the leaves out of my prayer book which I trust will comfort and help you. It tells of the loving kindness of our Heavenly father in all that concerns sand his watchful care over us.

and the signing off

Your loving & affectionate mother

I feel rather humbled to have such poignant correspondence in my possession but rather love the act of preserving this emotion in stitch and bringing it back to life. It saddens me in a way that letters like these have found their way onto Ebay because somewhere along the line they have been discarded as of no interest. But I have no way of knowing the back stories and I’m a more than willing recipient of these little treasures and it breaks my heart to think that they could’ve ended up in landfill – or recycling – but there’s a thought that could take on a whole new direction!!

Ali Ferguson textile art
My Dear Child

Again it is stitched on a background of the old silk organza. I have deconstructed a beautiful hand stitched antique baby gown, possibly a christening gown, and added the most tiny mother of pearl buttons. This piece became the inspiration for my Not Just Blue quilts. There was something very poignant about taking apart and then re-piecing together these beautiful little dresses. I am continually inspired by the shapes of garments pieces and find the act of  re-arranging and placing each part to be so very engrossing and pleasing. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it.

Ali Ferguson textile art
My Dear Child Detail

As well as the stories and energies of those who wrote the letters and the recipients of the letters these pieces are also imbued with the stories of the garments themselves and the real wearers. I love how all these energies entangle and interact and therefore become one with each other. I rather imagine this to be much like how the energies of any group of strangers finding themselves randomly in each others company will intermingle and interact with each other – often completely unnoticed but a connection has been made. In my mind this rather neatly takes us back to Locard’s principle of exchange where every time you make contact with another person, place, or thing, it results in an exchange of physical materials. I rather like to think that there is also a very real exchange of emotional energies and I rather think that this thought will keep me inspired for a long time to come.

And lastly – sometimes I like to stitch little pieces in explanation – a bit like a rather gorgeous sketchbook page.

Ali Ferguson textile art
The making of HiStories Uncovered

The Story Behind The Piece: Not Just Blue

Not Just Blue

Fragile cot sized quilts expressing experiences of postnatal depression

The inspiration for this series came from a creative art project that I delivered several years ago with Midlothian Sure Start working with groups of parents within their six family support centres in Midlothian. Titled ‘Hear Me Out’ the idea was that I would hold discussion sessions with groups of parents encouraging them to speak out about issues that were important to them. We would then go on to create some expressive artworks which would be displayed in an exhibition to which we would invite health care professionals, local MSPs, local councillors as well as the general public.

During the very first session with the very first group I asked if there was anything anyone would like to discuss. One woman said ‘I’d like to talk about postnatal depression’ …and she did. After she shared some of her experiences so then did several others in the group and one of the most emotional discussions that I have been involved in began. I told this story to each subsequent group that I worked with and one by one women opened up and told their stories.

Ali Ferguson Feeling such a failure

During the sessions we wrote down everything discussed. We then went on to create not only several individual personal collages but also a patchwork paper ‘quilt’ as a joint project across all the Sure Start centres. Each patch contained the words that had been spoken during the sessions and the patches were then joined with selotape, staples and safety pins. The finished rather haphazard and scrappy quilt was titled ‘Barely Holding It Together’ and it became one of the centrepieces of our exhibition.  As a result of this work we also went on to publish an accompanying booklet titled “So Why Do I Feel Like This’ which became a resource for new mothers used by health visitors in health centres across Midlothian. Some of the work travelled round the health centres to be exhibited in the waiting rooms and feedback from health visitors revealed that having it displayed in the baby clinics had helped to open meaningful conversations about some of the issues raised.

I’m incredibly proud of this piece of work and the words spoken by the women never left me. In 2016 when I was considering the title ‘Another View’ for an exhibition with Prism Textiles the thought that immediately came into my mind was to explore ‘another view of motherhood’.  I revisited the notes that I had made a few years previously and found them to be just as powerful and just as moving as I remembered. Inspired by our original quilt ‘Barely Holding It Together’ I went on to make my two fragile, scrappy quilts, the first of which was exhibited with Prism Textiles at the RBSA Birmingham and Hoxton Arches, London in 2017. You’ll find more about this series of work under Cloth Work

Experiences of postnatal depression

Now in 2018 I’m returning to this series to start work on Part two. This will comprise of three vintage baby dresses each stitched with one mother’s  story. On the front will be the words that are presented to the world such as – ‘I’m fine’, ‘I’m just tired’ etc.  We’ve all heard people say them. Hand stitched on the back of the dresses will be the real story, the one that tends to get hidden from view. Displayed with the dresses will be three pairs of vintage baby shoes

Vintage baby dress

It saddens me that these stories still go untold and that behind closed doors woman still feel isolated, ashamed and that they are the only ones to be feeling this way. I can’t help but feel that the pressure to be ‘happy’ and to be ‘coping’ must be even higher in these days of social media.

My hope again is that reading these words will open up other conversations and maybe show other women that they are not alone and give them the courage to speak out and ask for help.

Stitched stories of postnatal depression

Embroidered vintage baby shoes

And lastly if a member of your family or a friend has a baby – maybe just check out that they really are ‘fine’.

Postnatal Depression

Gorgeous photographs in this blog by: Michael Graham, The Studio Penicuik & Carole Fitzgerald, Lazy Sunday