NEW NEEDLEWORK

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 75, 29 March 1934, Page 13

NEW NEEDLEWORK

WES.SEX STITCHERY

An interesting item of news appears in tho "Daily Mail" regarding tho needlework of an aged lady. Tho writer says: "A remarkable exhibition -pf the work of a 92-years-old woman opens at a West End art gallery next week—and every item on. show is a piece of needlework! Nothing quite like this nefdlccruft has ever been seen before, mid some of the greatest experts in needlework are astounded by the skill and inventive genius of thu aged craftswoman, Mrs. M. M. Foster, of Bath. "Of the 140 pieces to be shown the majority are panels on which are wrtten in minute and perfectly'formed stitches tho sayings of great men of air ages. "Lady Winef ride Elwes, who has been instrumental in. the organisation of the exhibition, said that, the .work, of this gentle, scholarly woman, has caused a sensation among • people who had apparently nothing to learn about the art of needlework. A PEN-LIKE NEEDLE. "Mrs. Foster has, invented a now kind of needlework altogether," she said. "Without any prearranged pattern and without a traced background she uses her needle lika a pen, stitching her beautifully formed words, and intricate patterns as they come into her head. "She has invented something like 300 different stitches. ■ "I took the Hon. Lady Mallet, head of the Amateur Art- Exhibition, and Lady Smith-Dorrien, principal of tho .Royal..-School,of, JC.eedlework, together with her chief expert, to see Mrs. Foster's work,-and they were astonished by it. She has discovered an entirely new technique." ■ Wessex stitehery is the name given to the work.- In letters less .than one-eighth of an inch in sixe, yet as firmly and beautifully "formed as if they had been printed, there"'was the quotation "All nature is beautiful" —from Alexander Pope, "'.''■: '":''■ -