The Thing About Early Textiles.......

The thing about early textiles is that they provide us (those of us who love them)with a visceral link to the past. Whenever I lay my hand on cloth or sampler, cloth poppet or animal I feel as if I've connected with the maker via an impulse a century or more old that has been sent by the maker straight to my head, heart and soul. It can sometimes make the hair stand up straight on the back of my neck and make my heart jump. I can sometimes sense the depth of the maker's joy or sorrow, fatigue or energy and try to imagine what life must have been like for her all those years ago when life was much harder and sometimes the only creative outlet a woman had was her needlework. By needlework I am referring to "the toil of the needle", not that done for refinement and pleasure but that borne out of necessity - like the need for a new dress for a child, or a new pin cushion, or a new doll for a present when there was little money to buy one. I am not trying to connote a negative meaning with my use of the phrase, just trying to distinguish the type of needlework I so love as opposed to the more refined needlework of women who occupied a much higher station in life than the farmer's wife, the seamstress, the less coddled woman of her day.
It is to her and her work that I would like to devote this blog. To learn more about both the maker and the object. I hope to use this forum to explore that which I do know and that which do not, but hope to learn. Knowledge is power!