featuring BBC Woman’s Hour Craft Prize
I own an eclectic wardrobe. Some of my dresses may even be a century old. Most trousers are winter sales snatches off the high street. My sister buys all my socks. The scarves and bags are from my sister-in-law.
I love mixing and matching and living in an a-temporal fashion gap. I sometimes receive compliments on my clothes… and sometimes I don’t.
One of the most surprising items to ever receive compliments on has been a cardigan. A green-grey, hand knitted, larger than average cardigan that got out of the wardrobe and onto my shoulders through pure luck, one random, chilly Tuesday morning. The only two reasons it ever saw the light of day were: 1. It was a chilly morning and 2. I was rushing to leave for work, and all my other warm weather pieces were piled in the washing basket.
At that point in time, I could not fully tell why this cardigan received so many compliments, but what I can tell you is that from that day onwards I wore it with pride and often.
These days, every time I receive a compliment, I feel obliged to tell its story.
You see, this cardigan was the result of a whole winter of measurements, knitting, unravelling, design changes and more measurements. It was made by Grandma. She double-lined the yarn, to keep me very warm. She knitted the sleeves using a four-needle grip, she made up button holes. For the buttons, she dismembered her old dress. She hand washed and pat dried the cardigan.
The cardigan was green, because ‘it goes well with your eyes’. It was slightly larger than my teenage self, ‘so that you grow into it’, as one does. ‘Who knows, you might even wear it when you’re pregnant.’
As an adolescent, I never wore it. It was too big, and it had been hand knitted! Feeling slightly guilty, I carried it with me, and when I moved to the UK, I brought it along. But had it not been for that chilly Tuesday morning, it would not have ever seen the light of day.
Since then, it has seen me through three pregnancies and countless school runs.
Recently, the yarn started to unravel at the seams. Especially on the right hand sleeve. This fortuitously coincided with a rather unusual exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The BBC Woman’s Hour Craft Prize celebrates the art of craft. Every single exhibit in the gallery has you question the place of craft in contemporary art.
Celia Pym is one of the twelve finalists exhibiting at the V and A. Celia is a textile artist who darns other people’s clothing, whilst listening to their stories and the people’s relationship with the garments. On hearing that, I took my cardigan to have it repaired.
Before even considering changing my cardigan, Celia took time to discuss why I loved it and why it was meaningful to me. She then complimented me (several times!) on the quality of the knitting and only after that, together, we considered repair options. Celia darned mauve thread on the sleeve of my cardigan. It looks beautiful.
THE ART OF CRAFT
In this post, I have many things to celebrate. My grandma, her craftsmanship and her legacy. Meeting Celia and discussing the cardigan when I took it in for her to mend it highlighted this even further. Celia convinced me of the beauty and endurance of Grandma’s work. In 20 years, all that had unravelled was a little yarn on a sleeve, which Celia thoughtfully and beautifully mended.
I also want to celebrate prizes such as the BBC Woman’s Hour Craft Prize, which bring to light amazing artists and forgotten craft and give them the praise they deserve.
These days, I have a different story to tell: an artist made my cardigan, and another artist mended it, and I now look forward to wearing my twenty-year old, green-grey cardigan.
I had both my Grandma’s cardigan and my brother-in-law’s T-shirt repaired during The BBC Woman’s Hour Craft Prize open days, when anyone could bring a garment for her to mend. During the workshop with Celia, we also got to map the holes on a large tracksuit, which will provide a record of all the holes seen over the course of the mending days.
[…] you find out more about my Grandma. There are many blog posts on here that are connected to grandma, who was a major influence to me, growing […]