Tuesday, 13 December 2016

Worn Out

The last and smallest room of my current solo exhibition at The Customs House contains my most intimate and personal work which mixes up my love of working on to the surface of old quilts and my love for my grandmother. It brings together embroidered quotes from her diaries, some of her household possessions and my beloved old quilt fragments. I still use the fork on my allotment.

Worn Out

In the year that Mandy Pattullo became a grandmother she has been thinking a lot about her own grandmother who died more than 30 years ago. She was a poor farmer’s wife and was worn out through trying to make ends meet. To supplement the income from the farm she sold eggs, raised piglets for sale and looked after the calves. In the lead up to Christmas she would sit in a cold barn and pluck ducks and turkeys for the local butcher. Looking through her diaries Mandy could see that she had many livestock and money worries, but  her own  good memories are of her working in the farmhouse garden, making clothes on the old Singer and her cooking for legendary parties at the farm. Reading the diaries and slowly sewing her words brings Mandy closer to her life and helps her reflect on her own role as a grandmother to Bobby.














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