The Girl

My name is Lannie and I'm in the final year of my undergrad, majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Art History. My first attempt at sewing was in the sixth grade, after I got fed up with stapling the pocket of my private school trousers shut (but mostly because the staples kept scratching my leg). Needless to say, it was an ugly gnarled mass of stitches, but it got the job done.

Since then, my skills developed gradually in fits and bursts of needlework here and there. When I was nineteen, I sewed band patches onto my army jacket in a fit of teenage angst, and only came to realize later how this act of ornamentation functioned as a public declaration of my identity as configured  through an iconography of punk and death metal.

Two years ago, I helped work on the World's Largest Button Blanket under the auspices of Tahltan artist Peter Morin and West Coast art historian Carolyn Butler Palmer.

Photo by Margeory Graham.

The blanket was danced at the Diversity Conference held in First People's House at the University of Victoria, and in order  to mark the occasion, I worked diligently in my spare time to embroider my own ceremonial regalia using the symbols appropriate to my own cultural background.

 Since my ethnic background is comprised of virtually all the Celtic nations (except England proper), all the Nordic nations (with the exception of Finland), with some Saami and German mixed in, I embroidered a vest depicting the Pictish wolf in my matrilineal family colours of red and white.

For extra credit, I helped to sew one of several button blankets which would ceremonially veil the works of Emily Carr in a reclamation of coastal iconography. These blankets were later gifted to honoured guests at the performance art demonstration held at the Legacy Art Gallery and enacted by Peter Morin and Rebecca Gilmore.

After these formative events, I was hooked (pardon the mixed metaphors). Shortly thereafter, I was hunting down Regency era patterns to embroider on the sleeves of a gown fashioned after the style of that period. And recently, I had my 1891 Singer treadle sewing machine serviced, so it is ready for action!