sunshine corner

It's the third day of my residency at The Old Sale Rooms and today was very busy with visitors so I did considerably more talking than rag rugging. But that's what it's about too! And the relationship between textiles and talking: 'spinning a yarn', 'weaving a tale', 'embroidering the truth' runs deep, and continues with today's 'Knit and Natter' groups.

Met a woman who remembers attending chapel here (The Old Sale Rooms was originally a Methodist chapel). Her parents were the caretakers and she recalls coming in with them to stoke up the fires with coal before a service. She also recalled going to 'Sunshine Corner', a Sunday school held in the former Moose Hall just around the corner. She told us when she was young, she and her friends used to circulate around all the Sunday schools when it was getting close to 'trip' time, so that they got invited on all the summer charabanc trips!

Another visitor told me he remembered his grandmother in Yorkshire rag rugging a stair carpet. It's not the first time I've been told of such an ambitious endeavour. One woman recently told me that her father used to joke that they'd have to move into the shed to make room for the increasing amount of space that the stair carpet was taking up, as her mother neared its completion!

And I heard about rug making traditions on the canal narrow boats and Pauline, a narrow boat owner brought in to show me her lovely vintage braid making clamp and 'braid aids'.

Pauline's vintage braiding clamp (with braid aids)

Also talked with mother and daughter, Sarah and Anne. Sarah, told me what her daughter was too modest to mention: that her daughter had won a first prize for the 'rag rug' chair seat cover she had made!