Before Christmas, the Leverhulme-funded Lady’s Magazine project that Jennie Batchelor, Koenraad Claes and Jenny DiPlacidi are working on, launched a public engagement initiative called the Great Lady’s Magazine Stitch Off. The project team made available 5 of the rare embroidery patterns acquired by Jennie when she purchased a bound copy of a half-year of the magazine from 1796 by a follower of the project’s blog. The idea was to generate new interest in the project from embroiderers and crafters and to learn from their experiences of attempting to recreate historical embroidery in the modern day. The initial response was quite overwhelming and within a few weeks several individuals and the odd embroiderer’s guild (on 3 different continents) had taken on the patterns. One follower, historical needlework expert Alison Larkin, is using the patterns to create an exhibit (for a six-month exhibition on sailors’ wives at the Captain Cook Museum, which opens this month. Since then the project has been able to make available 3 additional and really stunning patterns from 1775, which have made available to the project by another of its followers, BBC Radio3 presenter Penny Gore.
This Stitch Off has generated broad international interest and this week the project was able to announce on its blog this week that participants have been invited to display their embroidery in a room dedicated to female accomplishments at the ‘Emma at 200’ exhibition Chawton House Library is running from March to September this year to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s novels.
Image: A New Pattern for a Gown (Dimensions: 29cm x 15cm)