A ginghammy thinghammy… a phrase of my mum’s… she loved a ginghammy thinghammy. (My word processor doesn’t. Red lines all over the place!)
I pulled a bit of blue gingham out of someone else’s ragbag. The great thing about belonging to a group of quilters is that every now and again someone will come to the meeting with black bin bags in the back of their car. Oh the joy! The contents are tipped out, we rummage for two hours, and the majority of the bags’ contents go away to different homes. One woman’s rubbish another’s treasure.
So, the blue gingham, the stuff of schools in summer….
A skirt, home made, possibly in a lesson, by the child that wore it. It’s old, hand stitched badly in places, mended, torn. It is all cotton, not easy wash, non-iron, poly-cotton. It is crumpled, soft – really really soft. The hem has been unpicked to the fraying edge… either by the growing child’s mother, or by the thrifty quilter so as to use every scrap of fabric. The quilter has gouged a great lump out of this skirt, the size of half a dinner plate, a scoop from the hem, round in a lump and back again.
I think this will form part of my Respectable work.
Miraculously, in the bottom of a different bin bag was another piece of the same gingham, less worn, mysteriously cut on the bias. I think I’m going to mend the hole. Then I expect I will embroider something using the squares as a guide. Because of the squares, I pondered using it as part of the pixel work, perhaps taking it apart, but the garment as a whole is so evocative of my own school days it has to stay as it is, and I shall make it respectable again… then no doubt do something to it to make it not so.
