Arts for All - samples

When the book 'The Leeds Tapestry - we made it' was published the Arts for All panel hadn't been completed. The background, by Chris Richardson (top), was ready but the individual pieces of embroidery had not been chosen.

The Environment panel was made by the West Riding Rag Ruggers, the Leeds in Bloom panel was originally to have been completed by the Embroiderers' Guild and in the same way the Arts for All panel was to have been made by patchwork and quilters.

Many of the Night Owl quilters had too many other commitments at the time but several of them made small postcard sized samples to see what could be done on that scale. Some of the results are shown above.

The Pillars at Catalana were machine appliqued by Chris Richardson and the Malham view by Liz Thompson.

Arts for All - Armley Mills

There have been mills on the site since the seventeenth century but the building now standing was constructed by Benjamin Gott after a fire in 1805. The mill closed in 1969 and was bought by Leeds City Council who reopened it in 1982 as an industrial museum. In the early days of making Leeds Tapestry a room at the museum was used for workshops, but when a Lottery Grant was obtained for computer equipment the workshop was moved to the more central location of Holy Trinity Church where there was more space for an office.


Extract from a letter by Claire Wildman, September 2, 2003

"Looking back, I'm glad that in the early days we worked on the Tapestry in the Armley Mills Museum, it seemed right, to be where the wool was spun into weft and woven into material. I hope that the tapestry, and Leeds coat of arms, will remind people in the future that that is how Leeds started. I was thirteen when the Second World War started, so when I left school in 1940 I started work at Hartley's Mill up Dewsbury Road, it wasn't exactly clogs and shawls, but as a weaver I had to have a weft skirt, which was a harding skirt gathered round the waist which fell very full to the floor, it was used to carry bobbins from the 'mules'to the looms. When the bobbins were ready to be 'doffed' the women would fill baskets and bins and tip them into your skirt, which you would pick up from the bottom hem to catch all the bobbins and they would be put right round so the skirt was full and the weight even. It was quite easy to carry, though you took plenty of room up. To empty it you simply stooped forward into the weavers baskets. You had to be quick, the weavers were on piece work, not by the hour.
I don't know any other mills that had this method, though Hartley's had some more mills in Morley, may be they did"

How many more mills would have been on the Tapestry if the planning and designing had been thirty years earlier?

Chris Richardson machine appliqued this piece.

Arts for All

Arts for All was the final panel completed. It represents a decorative pin board with postcards of examples of arts in Leeds. I've added it today in celebration of the exhibition at the V & A.

When the first 15 panels had been made there was a difficult time finding a home for them all. At first they were displayed in the stable courtyard at Harewood, then they moved to The Royal Armouries. The latter was a more suitable venue because there was free access to them but this, again, was only a temporary home.

Leeds City Council offered another temporary display site in a first floor corridor of the Central Library and its here that the Arts Panel was unveiled. Finally, last year, the Council, Library and Tapestry Trustees agreed that the Library would be the permanent exhibition space; and after redecoration, re-hanging and interpretation boards were added there was a re-union for the volunteers and friends to celebrate.

The background patchwork was made, almost entirely, by Chris Richardson of Night Owls quilters group