Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Josef Frank inspired floral initial P (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

There I was with beautifully laid out sewing plans ready to take me up to the season which cannot be named as we’re really nowhere near it yet, and then I find myself seized with the desire to do another jolly floral initial for the new(ish) granddaughter of an old friend from my London days! My copy of a heavily pictorial book on the textiles of Josef Frank has been far too prominently lying around recently and honestly, I thought, how long can it take to embroider a few flowers on a piece of A5 sized linen? Well, about a week, is the answer.

Detail: Josef Frank inspired floral initial P (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Detail:Josef Frank inspired floral initial P (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Just before lockdown, now about 10 days ago, I was in the middle of a mending phase, sewing up all those little holes that appear out of nowhere in winter scarves, gloves and tights, not forgetting holes in useful pockets through which random items disappear never to be seen again. My husband’s speciality is making holes down the front of the lightweight jumpers he wears – probably due to the pipe he faffs about with when he sits outside pouring over his research papers. But now he had reached the point where all his jumpers had little holes – even the newest one bought in the summer – and my card of navy blue mending wool was empty. ‘No more twist ‘ as Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester bewailed. And nor was there any in the centre of town – the assistant of  John Lewis in Cheltenham sympathised but said they didn’t stock it, in spite of badgering the buyers about its need.

Detail: Josef Frank inspired floral initial P (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Detail:Josef Frank inspired floral initial P (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Well, perhaps all this will change now the Prince of Wales has been singing the praise of mending to the editor of British Vogue in the December issue of the magazine. A great fan of mending, he doesn’t just get his clothes mended, he positively delights in doing so and has gone one step further, setting up a sort of thrift market at Dumfries House where people can take all sorts of things to be repaired, from holey jumpers to electrical appliances. He would like to encourage people to set up small businesses in repair, maintenance  and reuse, which is an honourable and decent ambition and it may well work with electrical appliances but I honestly can’t see many people making any money from any domestic mending when you consider how long it can take to darn even a small hole. But perhaps things will change and sporting mended clothes will become not just the right thing to do but absolutely the only thing to do – a badge of honour declaring the greenest of green credentials. Think how attitudes to smoking have changed.

Sketch: Josef Frank inspired floral initial P

But the Prince of Wales has not stopped at mending. To encourage young people to learn traditional skills and crafts, his foundation has started a textile training project in high end fashion and sewing skills. Many students completing the course have been snapped up by local textile firms  but the prince hopes that soon the tide will turn on throwaway fashion and there will be a demand for sustainability in all sorts of innovative ways. To this end, The Modern Artisan, a collaboration between the Prince’s Foundation  and the Yoox-Net-a-Porter Group, has created a collection for men and women using sustainable textiles. (Each item can be tracked using its digital ID.)  Garments, which will be available in the new year,  have been designed by 6 fashion graduates from the Politecnico di Milano, and made by 6 British artisans who have done a course in luxury small batch production skills in Dumfries House. The clothes are not cheap,  ranging in price from £400 to £1,500, but are all classical,  including an update on the camel coat the prince has worn for decades, while other pieces are very like the clothes that fill the Duchesses of Cambridge’s and Sussex’s wardrobe. Hats off to the prince! Let’s hope he’s started something very exciting, whose effect will dribble down to lesser mortals with lighter purses.

Josef Frank: Textile Designs

Update 24 November 2020

Unable to call something finished until I no longer have it, I decided to make this embroidery into a mini quilt rather than simply mount it on card. Quilting has given the whole thing more texture which will make it stand out in a more interesting way when framed. As I don’t care for bare edges, I finished these off by oversewing them in satin stitch  in a dusty turquoise. I can now use one strip of Stitchery Tape to fix the embroidery to a piece of mounting card which interferes least with the integrity of the fabric.

Floral initial P, now quilted and bordered with satin stitch

Badge of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

What a week! The US Presidential Election inches towards its conclusion, while we in the UK go back to tighter pandemic restrictions.  I stayed up until 4am on Wednesday morning to try to understand the US’s arcane election practices but after nodding off over my knitting I realised the result would take days (some say possibly weeks) but definitely not hours and that bed was a better option. At 8am when my husband came up with a cup of tea, I was so not of this world that in a curious burst of energy I knocked the cup off my bedside chest of drawers and cascaded hot liquid all over me, bedlinen that was clean on the day before and a good deal of the rug and carpet beside the bed. Grrrr. Nothing is guaranteed to wake one up sooner than the spilling of a cup of tea – unless it’s a cup of coffee, which stains more, or, the very worst, a cup of Heinz tomato soup which will bleach colour out of anything, as I found to my cost when getting soup on an evening dress I was embroidering (problem solved – embroider over the bleached spot.)

At this time of year it is always difficult to blog things I’m making as many of these things will end up as Christmas presents for the family. I suppose I could warn them not to look at the blog but then that’s rather like knowing your mother stores your Christmas presents on top of the wardrobe … and being unable to stop pulling up a chair to have a look when her back is turned!

Detail of Lady Margaret Hal badge, showing embroidered talbots and portcullis

The plus side of lockdown tidying has been the unearthing of things I never knew I had – in spite of 3 house moves in the last 4 years. One of the things to appear is this rather nice embroidered badge which I think my mother must have bought when I went up to Oxford in 1970. I remember she’d done the same thing 7 years before when my brother went up to Jesus College Cambridge and strangely my Lady Margaret Hall (Oxford) badge was in the same packet as a Cambridge University badge. You used to be able to buy these badges for all the colleges in local shops. All hand embroidered, they were originally meant for blazers I suppose then, but now if you trawl the websites for what’s available it’s all lapel pins or machine embroidered badges on sweat shirts, T shirts, hoodies and college scarves (does anyone even wear college scarves any more?). Hand embroidered ones are available but need to be individually ordered but I have to say they are incredibly well priced for what looks like hand embroidery.

Examining the badge more than I ever did 50 years ago, it is interesting to pick out the heraldic details. The college was founded in 1878 and was the first college to open up an Oxford education to women. It was named after Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort and she is represented on the crest by a portcullis. Today the portcullis is best known as the symbol of the British parliament, but it began life as one of the symbols of the Tudors, appearing just as often as the now much more well known Tudor Rose. (See the wonderful carving above the Beaufort Gate of St John’s College Cambridge where both the Tudor emblems can be seen together. Lady Margaret Beaufort founded 2 Cambridge colleges, St John’s and Christ’s. That is, she actually bequeathed money for their foundation herself whereas in the case of Lady Margaret Hall, the foundation was more in honour of her memory as she had been dead for 370 years by then.) The two animals are talbots (dogs) and these represent Bishop Talbot, one of the founders and Warden of Keble College at the time. The bell comes from the Wordsworth coat of arms and represents Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth (great niece of the poet) who was the college’s first principal).

Original college crest of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
from stonework in the college.

Lady Margaret Hall’s Facebook page points out that this crest was in fact not the college’s first choice. The original one shows three daisies carved in stone wit the motto “Ex solo ad solem” meaning somewhat cryptically “From the earth to the sun”.  Perhaps, lovely as the daisy crest is, it was thought to be a bit too greenery-yallery and fey for an establishment urging women to seriousness of higher education. Crest and motto were duly replaced – the latter by “Souvent me souviens”, the motto of the Beaufort family, meaning  “I remember often”  or “think of me often” both of which perhaps remind one to remember one’s alma mater but offer no further guidance as to, say, life’s journey or the human condition. Probably I expect too much from a motto!