THE FORGOTTEN SEAMSTRESS

Maria’s Quilt, Royal Silks And A Mental Hospital!

I come from a silk weaving family and have always been fascinated by fabrics. I was visiting the famous Warner Archive, in Braintree, Essex, when I saw a case of ‘May Silks’ – beautiful cream and white damasks and brocades, some with interwoven gold and silver threads, hand-woven for the trousseau of Princess May (1867-1953), also known as Mary of Teck, for her wedding to the heir to the British throne. More than a century later, these silks still glimmered and shimmered in their case. They are truly unique, and have never been woven before or since. 

Around the same time I visited an exhibition of quilts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was reminded of the many different ways in which quilts tell stories. 

I was fortunate to be introduced to the internationally-acknowledged quilter Lynne Edwards, MBE for services to arts and crafts. Over bottles of wine and lots of laughter, we ‘devised’ the quilt that Maria made, taking into account the influences and sources of inspiration that she would have had at different times of her life, and the sort of fabrics she might have had at her disposal. Lynn very generously created the pattern, which is available if you contact me. Here are some of the interpretations already made by brilliant quilters.

The setting of the hospital is based on Severalls Mental Asylum in my home town of Colchester which, when it first opened in 1913, it once of the largest in the country. We now understand that such places were sometimes inhumane, even brutal, and patients often became institutionalised by the strict routines. It closed years ago and few of the buildings remain. 

www.warnertextilearchive.co.uk

Madness in its Place, Diana Gittins (Routledge 1998).