Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The fabric of life

This one's for my quilting friends.


Several days ago we visited a manor, Lytes Cary, where the National Trust volunteers stood guard in a friendly way over some amazing treasures. Treasures you'd expect should be in a museum. The NT way of stopping the visiting hordes from resting their backsides on the many beautiful chairs was to place a seedhead of a teazel on the cushion. I was amused to see this because in the area around our farm at Homerton this plant is a noxious weed. It is growing in the Mt Eccles National Park and on the roadside near the house I grew up in but not on our farm as yet. It is a prickly customer and obviously effective at deterring anyone thinking of having a rest.


But what I really wanted to show my quilting friends was the beadspread on one of the four-posters and the tapestry on the wall - both very old.


And in one of the churches I've been in the local ladies have made an embroidered image of their own town. Each lady embroidered one house which was then attached to the background fabric and then the whole was embellished with more embroidery of gardens and so on. It was over one metre wide and quite spectacular. To see this picture (or any of the blog pictures) more clearly just click on it. It shows the Saxon Square, which is the central part of Wedmore village, as it is today. The houses that surround the square each have a private garden that extends into the centre area. Unfortunately the central square is not open to the public.

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