Memories of WW1 Textile

The WW1 exhibition is up at the Norris Museum in St Ives and will be open until the 28th of September.  As promised I have some more pictures of the show. Young people from the history and textiles departments of the Ivo school researched the war on a visit to the    Huntindonshire archives

We used images, letters. newspaper articles which they selected to create these 3 panels.

This one focusses on the stories about local men who went to war

This panel is the story of the VAD's (nurses), of the music that was played during the war, and features a local school's log book recording the news of the Armistice

This  panel is about the women and children at home, in and around St Ives and their role in the War Effort

So, each panel has  number of pictures which the young people and museum volunteers transferred onto fabric and embellished with stitch, applique, buttons and other ephemera

... like these of the Hunts cyclists

and this assemblage on Ivor Day, which includes a poem written by his brother on the event of Ivor's sad death in action.

Here is a lovely composition, found in a school book, written by the young girl pictured, describing how children can help in the war effort.

Many of the local women  became VAD's

I pre-dyed many of the fabrics using natural dyes to match the muted browns of the sepia photographs and to capture the sombre mood of the war.  We used touches of red as a highlight, here and there.

Scattered across the panels are verses of popular WW1 songs. The exhibition is part of a larger show on the music of the Great War.  The young people from St Ivo School did these little panels by exposing the texts to the sun using cyanotype fabric - another link with history.

I have even more from this exhibition - I'll show it in my next post......