dimity, fustian and....hessian

There is a fascinating chapter on home spinning/weaving and the birth of cotton spinning in:

Home Life in Colonial Days  by  Alice  Morse EARLE (1851 - 1911)

You can listen to it online by following this link:

https://librivox.org/home-life-in-colonial-days-by-alice-morse-earle/

Thinking of fabric, the other day when I travelled to the Blackdown Hills and spoke with members of the Hemyock Brightside Group, they brought home to me just how significant hessian has been, as a fabric in this farming area. Not only was it used as a base for rag rug making, it was also put down on the floor unadorned, just as it was, to protect the floors from dirt and mud. Hessian sacks were also adapted to be worn as clothing to give some protection against the elements and during threshing times. And a woman I met on the bus journey to Hemyock, recalled using large needles to sew hessian into sacks on the farm where she grew up.

rag rugging on a narrowboat

I am enormously excited to have been invited to lead some rag rugging sessions on one of Float by Boat's meditative narrow boat weekends! Rag rugs are very much associated with narrow boats and it's an interesting fact that women joined their husbands to help crew working narrow boats around about the mid 1800s when the growth of the railways had the effect of lowering the wages of boatmen, and it is during this very same period that the importation of hessian led to the growth in rag rug making (hessian providing a cheap, often free, open weave base suitable for rug making). During the early Autumn weekend of 3rd - 5th Oct. I will be teaching people how to make wearable three-dimensional floral 'blossoms' - showing how traditional rag rug techniques and up-cycled fabrics may be used in fresh, innovative ways!

Last year I joined Float by Boat for one of their meditative breaks myself, and found it so life enhancing. Summoning up memories of being on Spirited Away - recalling the sensation of it's gentle rocking movement in the water and in the breeze, remembering the play of light reflected from the water around the interior of the boat and the shadows of tree branches chasing through  the porthole windows, I am transported once again to a place where the natural world seems to beckon me to a stillness, in which I can appreciate her far better. I thought of the experience of being on Float by Boat today, as I walked along the bank of the River Culm in Devon. Sitting still with a friend, we watched dippers, a yellow wagtail and house/sand martins(?) skim over the surface of the river. Found wild garlic leaves beginning to unfurl, bees nose-deep in blackthorn blossom, male and female catkins on alder, smelt the fragrant cuckoo flower (Lady's Smock) and saw fish leap.

 

See Float by Boat's facebook page or their website for further details of this rag rugging weekend and their other meditative canal breaks:   

 

www. floatbyboat.co.uk

 

https://www.facebook.com/FloatByBoat

Narrowboat Spirited Away - A Float by Boat meditative canal break

memories of hearth and home

Here are some of the braids that residents at Linden House have been plaiting for their rag rug.

 

 

During these rag rug sessions, I have been recording their memories of Hearth and Home: the rug making that they helped with as children, the rag and bone man, tying rags in their hair at night for curls in the morning, bath night using tin baths filled with hot water from the copper. It is so warming hearing their 'fireside' stories. One lady has an especially keen ear for dialogue and others embellish their stories using vivid sensory detail. They are excellent story-tellers!