Memories of WW1 Textile - The community

Although I have been the 'artist' on this project what I've loved most about the whole process is that it has been a true collaboration. The Hunts Archive pulled out all sorts of wonderful resources for us.The components of the panels were all made by students from the Ivo School with hands-on help from both their History and Textiles teachers. My wonderful mother, Resa Selsick, arrived just in time to help me with the mammoth task of sewing the panels up. And the collaboration extends to the display 'in the box', shown below.

The Textiles teacher from the Ivo school came up with the wonderful idea of using an old suitcase as part of our display and the Norris museum managed to source one of these.

One of the students from the school did a collage of various newspaper articles and letters we found in the archive and the museum.  I made up a photoscreen from this and we used it as a cloth that draped from the ceiling into the suitcase.

We masked out areas of the main print and included images of some of the young men from St Ives who went to war

We used this as a base for other wonderful things made by the community for the show.

These included little stuffed hearts made by volunteers from the museum, from U3A, from Adult Learning Classes for adults with learning disabilities and from Claire's Creative Cabin.  These replicated the pincushions made by invalided soldiers, using some of the images from the main panels as the focal picture on each heart.  .

Some of these volunteer embroiderers also made exquisitely  stitched postcards on silk organza, (which is not an easy fabric to sew on). These were based on the hugely popular cards sent home by the troops from France and Belgium.

Thanks to Cary for drawing these up for us.

And of course I couldn't have done this whole project without the wonderful Gilly Vose, assistant curator at the Norris museum and great collaborator!

I know these pictures are a bit blurry - if you get the chance, come along and see it all for yourself!!!

It's all part of a bigger exhibition at the

Norris Museum