Rewards
Tricia sent this to me this morning:
I am up early this morning preparing for my trip to see the jacket in the UK and took a quick look at the blog to see Jill’s latest entry. It made me very happy and again validated the enormous amount of work this project has required.
We have been tallying the hours put into this project to help the Melinda Watt understand the labor that may have been used during the original construction. 1200 hours of productive embroidery time up to June 1. We embroidered allot since then. That only counts the minutes that the needles were actually moving. Most likely another 1200 hours of time the stitchers were there preparing, reading instructions, etc.
Then there are the staff hours. Countless at this point – setting up, organizing, feeding us, blogging. And working their normal load these two years to boot! And the hours that Wendy has spent supervising the workshop so I might be home on the weekend to be with my children. About 600 or more easily.
My hours. Jill and the volunteer coordinator have been on me to give them that tally. Pattern drafting, searching the world for supplies, re-engineering and testing threads, writing the instructions, embroidering, lecturing…we figure now about 1000 + hours over the project.
The blog this morning just reinforces the reward. The informal nature of the workshop set up has consistently provided opportunities for people to try and learn skills they would never have tried before.
Bobbin lace isn’t something you come upon easily and it is a skill with a barrier of cost and availability of instruction to overcome.
But by having the pillow there, it is easy to invite a person to sit for a few minutes and make the moves that Carolyn tells you to make. Then it is instantly demystified and the siren of the bobbin has caught you.
We laugh in the workroom when visitors (there are massive numbers of them) come in to look. There is a buzz on the plantation when we are working and people just show up. If you linger too long, the needle
is passed to your hand. Many people have been waylaid to put a few stitches in. If they resist – we give them a doodle cloth and show them. Sometimes we end up with that visitor staying for an hour stitching on the cloth. One set of visitors from our first session were converted and have become regular stitchers, traveling from the south to work with us over and over again. And if you are an intern, well expect that you will learn as part of your job.
Lilia is shown in her volunteer costume just in for a few minutes on break. She had to do something on the jacket, she has been our weekend helper for the project.
We are looking at the future of our handcrafts in this picture.
That is our reward.
Tricia
