Guest blog post by rug hooker, Diane Cox, History 51 Contributor
The Mesdames Myrtles hooking group has been together for many years in different hooking groups, but formed 2 years ago as a small group who wanted to stretch ourselves creatively and have unusual projects on the go! We spent an afternoon throwing names around and the Myrtles just seemed to fit! We are all in the Penzance area.
After the initial meeting at the Hypatia Trust we met to discuss how we would approach a visual response to acknowledging unsung Cornish women.We had a great afternoon chatting,but it became obvious that we all had differing ideas,and so the decisions made afterwards were...to visit Helston museum to get a feeling and a sense of ordinary women's lives,and that the whole subject was so enormous that the project wouldn't be as easy as we initially thought !
Yesterday we had our visit,and were so impressed by the museum..a real gem!
Over lunch we threw ideas about,and it seems right that we do one communal project,with the option of each of us,should we wish,responding with other more personal pieces.
We all agreed on 2 things...we wanted to emphasise the hard work and sometimes sheer drudgery of domestic work over the centuries,with the aim of showing how women have held everything together,and that we need to simplify our ideas for them to be effective in a textile work.
We realised that a written piece and a piece that is purely an image have to be approached totally differently!
So,we are having a creative day next week to play with ideas and hopefully end the day with the beginnings of our communal piece!
View a gallery of Diane's rug hooking work
[Thank you Diane and Mesdames Myrtles for your guest post, we can't wait to hear more about your progress! Ed]
