The addition of text.

 The oak tree symbolises ENDURANCE AND STRENGTH so these words seemed essential. 

I have added COMPASSION AND CAMARADARIE as two words I feel to be relevant to nursing and  which I feel are portrayed so beautifully by the Red Cross nurses I have embroidered for this piece of work.  Neither of them are my Grandmother but two young women of the same era sourced from the Red Cross website but who would have served in the same way with the same inherent qualities to nurture and care for others. 

Other words which come to mind are COURAGE, FORTITUDE, PATIENCE and GRATITUDE. These are the words most frequently used by the soldiers as they expressed thanks to my Grandmother. 

The words are stitched in free machined straight stitch on a strip of calico which has been carefully measured out as per the diagram below. Sadly I couldn't fit all the words in at present but this is work in progress and will evolve so I'm looking for ways to include these to their best advantage. At the moment I've added patience and gratitude.

Of course it was important to add the date.

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This is my work thus far :

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Chapter 12. The Red Cross

 My Grandmother registered to volunteer with the Red Cross in 1915 [see chapter 2]

I have decided to represent the Red Cross with a repeated simple cross shape composed of a commercial red felt to which I've added  further texture and colour with  painted Bondaweb. I then  drew on past ideas explored in Module One chapter 11 of my Embroidery Certificate to find ways of  presenting the cross shapes.

 I'm impressed by the row of nurses lined up in the clinic background resplendent in their uniforms with aprons displaying the red cross. For this reason I felt this block of the cross shapes creates a pleasing balance in the space adjacent to the clinic setting whilst picking up on the colours throughout the piece especially those featured within the cascade of poppies. At first I felt the cross patterning may be too dark in it's association with death but the Red Cross has such a good strong presence for good that this worry was dispelled. 

  I also have a Red Cross button to place but I feel this may be a later addition depending on composition and balance of the overall result.

Chapter 11. The cascade of poppies.

 I wanted to arrange the poppies as a cascade taking in the clinic, the soldiers attending and some of the text taking from my Grandmother's autograph book which contains anecdotes and messages of gratitude towards her. This little book was in use 107 years ago and captures the sentiments and experiences of the soldiers she helped to care for. The photo of the clinic in Exeter captures a moment in time and somehow I wanted to bring these factors together.

I felt this image of the clinic and the soldiers' sentiments somehow needed to be conjoined, I experimented with some reverse applique to cut a poppy shape out of the clinic photo [trying this with paper first] to reveal some of the soldiers' handwriting underneath. I have selected samples of handwriting which are clear and in best condition, I took care to find samples which gave details of the time and place e.g. date and location. I then tried placing the 'cut out' image amongst the poppy cascade. I followed this with poppy shapes taking in oak leaf patterns and more soldiers' handwriting.

I love the cascading effect so familiar to us and representative of remembrance whilst pleasing to the composition.

The next stage was to translate this into fabric:

This detail shows the layering of components - the machine stitched oak leaf pattern beneath the sample of handwriting, the image of the clinic and finally the cascade of poppies. My mother also found the beautiful photo of my Grandmother which sits comfortably amongst the poppies. I have surrounded the reverse applique with red free machine stitched satin stitch [Sian's suggestion - thank you] to represent how devotedly these soldiers were cared for and nurtured. Each poppy is secured with a snap fastener and secured by stitching these to the backing fabric which gives a 3D effect.