in Focus Stitching

In Focus Stitching in Swindon Museum and Art Gallery is now up and open for viewing. The whole exhibition features work completed by Great Western Embroiderers (of which I am a member) following exploration of the museum's archive of photographs dating from the early days of photography.

The archive reveals much about the history of Swindon. I found investigating the possibilities of the photographs fascinating and developed a body of work that explored the gender and social class differences of the time and the nature of people's daily lives.

The work shown below was developed from this single photograph of a street in Railway Village
which was built to provide accommodation for railway workers in the 19th century. Of interest to me were the tall chimneys and the lines of washing in the front gardens - thought-provoking for what they suggested about the lives of women of the time. I manipulated the image digitally, selecting, cutting and overlaying, and playing with colour and opacity to produce 8 small pieces, two of which are shown below.

All eight were then mounted onto panels and hung from a structure made by my husband so that they were suspended away from the wall to reference washing hanging on the line. 

Full details of the exhibition which runs in the community galleries of the museum until Saturday 7 September can be found in the earlier post here dated 4th May. More about my work for the exhibition can be found on my personal blog, https://charltonstitcher.blogspot.com/, 

Margaret Robbie