Things have really moved on since I last wrote. I very quickly determined what I am going to do while I’m here. Surprisingly quickly! It is weird how I can go from – eek! no ideas, can’t remember how I get ideas, I will never have another idea in my creative life – and then the next thing is that I have an idea! It never fails to amaze me!
So there are a couple of projects I want to do. I was inspired by these little exercise books from the archive of girls rescue home. One contained inventory’s of the belongings of the girls when they arrived, mostly just the clothes they wore. Another book listed the names of the 105 girls who went through the home between 1893 – 1900 and included their ages, the date they arrived and left, where they went on to – mostly into service, and a couple of sentences describing them. Some of the comments were positive, but most seemed very harsh, things like ‘dishonest and untrustworthy’, ‘lazy and needs careful watching’.
I realised that I didn’t understand much about the clothing of the time especially the petticoats and pinafores. What went under and what went over? So I spent some time researching what working class people wore at that time – not much written about the subject of course, but I got some images of underwear and of working class women and girls.
I’ve decided that I will make 105 garments, one for each of the girls, and embroider their description on their garment. My first attempt was a pair of drawers – which I made out of one of my cotton bed sheets. I had to make up my own pattern based on a picture from a book. It worked ok, but it made me realise that I really want to sew the garments by hand, which is going to make it a very long project! I’ve unpicked a linen surplice that I got from the antique textile fair last year, and started hand stitching an apron from it.
The other thing I want to do is a project based on the cubicles where the women slept in the women’s refuge. They were 4 foot by 6 foot according to the plan of the building that I found in the archives. I constructed a cubicle in my studio to see what it feels like to have that amount of private space and it really is cramped. There is space for a narrow bed and room to walk alongside, and they shared half a window with the cubicle next door.
I want to build one in the cafe and get people to sit in it and think about what possessions they would have to get rid of if they only had that amount of space.
Everything is on hold now until the exhibition which opens next Thursday (12th). It is going well, except the leaflets say it opens on Friday!
