GLASGOW
Flora
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Flora is a spinner, weaver, dyer and storyteller from one of Scotland's Gaelic speaking islands. The inspiration for her wall hanging was an a hundred and fifty year old drugget skirt, woven in linen and wool. It has once been made and worn by a crofter in her family. Flora sewed a crofter looking across to America where many of Flora's relatives went in search of work. Their embroidered names lie in the waves between her homeland and their new country. Flora used wool dyed from the plants of her island for the land beneath the woman's feet. Her wall hanging is called 'Longing' but its Gaelic translation 'Cianalas' means more than loss. It carries a community heartache: grief at the loss of the people, the place you belong to.
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Louisina treasures a little bag with Palestinian embroidery, given to her as a gift of kinship by her son-in-law's mother. He had been a Palestinian refugee who made a new life in Scotland and, when he and her daughter married, Louisina went to Bethlehem to meet his parents. It was a life changing experience. She walked into the camp, its gateway marked symbolically by the key of home and saw the high walls, the watchtower, the armed guards. But she found, amongst people with very little, only warmth, kindness and hospitality. She embroidered her wall hanging with threads sent from Bethlehem. The leaves of an olive tree, the tree of peace, are intertwined with those of an oak representing the one that stands in her own garden. The wall hanging symbolises the new enriching connection between her two families, their separate cultures and their two very different stories, brought together in her sewing.
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Louisina - Family
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Anne - place
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Anne came to sewing late in life,. A textile exhibition inspired her to join a quilting group. Her first quilt was of the River Clyde in Glasgow and she replicated it in miniature for her wall hanging which has the themes of Glasgow, History and Women. For Glasgow she transformed the city's coat of arms into a hope for future: its bird flying, its fish swimming in unpolluted waters the, its tree leafing. For History she traced the story of the river, from the 1900 ferry, to the buildings of its industrial heyday, to the latest arrival of the Hydro, a new exciting venue for large scale events. Beside the stitched outline of a young girl she penned an extract from Ruby McCann's poem Home Grown in Glasgow. Her wall hanging is an evocation of a place that she loves, a place that is changing, a place that Glaswegians call Dear Green Place.
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