1913 Lockout Tapestry Panels

Seems like an age since the opening of the 1913 Lockout Tapestries but just realised I didn't have any images of them up on blog!
So here's some. I was contacted by one the Artists Cathy Henderson, to see if I would like to get involved in the project which was commissioned by SIPTU as part of their centenary celebrations. off course I said yes and met Cathy at the Knit and Stitch show in Dublin in 2012 and got a bag of fabrics and some drawings.

This is the first panel that one of my students in the Craft class in the Education Unit in Limerick Prison and myself worked on. The image was drawn onto the backing fabric with a thick black marker which made is quiet difficult to work with as the drawing on the fabric and the one on paper did not match! M student chose and apply all the fabric pieces on with bondaweb and I did all of the stitching. I really enjoyed trying to mimic the lovely fee drawing style. But I was aware of the panels needing a common link and so used some hand embroidery as a link to the other pieces.

The lettering was all done by the one group and this is the finished panel consisting of four pieces made by different groups.

Enjoyed working on the first piece so much that I asked Cathy if she needed another panels done, and this is what she sent me. The same student who worked on the first panel with me put a huge amount of work into this. He picked all the fabric and appliquéd them to the background and did a lot of the preliminary thread work. I spend a couple of days satin stitching and finishing off the piece.

And here it is on display at the opening.

The same student has been working on a series based on this style the theme of which is the Magdalene Laundries which hopefully will be shown at the Knit and Stitch show in the RDS later this year and at the National Prison Art exhibition which is held every two years and will be in Limerick this year as part of the City of Culture celebrations.