WW1 Knitting update

Do you remember my April post about knitting for a community film project? Well, a couple of weeks ago I (and JTH, the cast, crew and over 100 knitters) went to the premiere.  There was such a sense of excitement in the cinema, in fact, so exciting it was that I forgot to take any photographs, so I have borrowed this one from Stewart Wall.com

I talked about how the film (documenting real lives and losses in a Lincolnshire village during WW1) came about and how I became involved in my April blog post it is a lovely story and as well as reading about it in my previous post you can follow links from there to the film company's website which has been considerably updated since April.

I think that there are still discussions going on about how widely the film will be shown and whether it will all be available on line, but you can watch three little clips on YouTube. The film, focusing on the lives of the Crowder family, is beautifully drawn, the music wonderful and there are moments of real sadness.

But this is a knitting blog and I want to tell you about the work done by the huge team of knitters. Nearly all were recruited by word of mouth after the costumier of the film tweeted a plea for knitters. Elizabeth Lovick of Northern Lace and many other knitters responded and a Facebook group was formed.  Elizabeth with her encyclopaedic knowledge of knitting led the group of knitters who could make costumes for the film project.  The list of knitters on the film's credits was the longest list of all, well over 100, making things from tiny dolls clothes to coats. Practically every item worn in the film is on show in The Collection, a museum and exhibition space in the centre of Lincoln until 6 December

There are literally dozens of sweaters, (you can just see the brown waistcoat I knitted on the left of the third row back)...

sweaters and cardigans in all sizes

over 20 shawls, I also made the dark pink shawl in the middle on the right (more of that later)...

All the shawls

and entire outfits displayed on mannequins

Manequins in full costume

Although as a knitter I felt that the knitting was the star, there are some other lovely things to see at the exhibition, like  Violet's diary, below.  She was a VAD, nursing wounded soldiers in the local hospital, marrying one of the Crowder brothers after the war.

Violet Crowder's war time diary

Not all the costumes were made new for the film, these stunning blouses are vintage

fabulous lawn blouses with beautiful lace and hand stitching

I loved these small items, can you see the rifleman's gloves in the bottom right hand corner, that have thumb and trigger finger exposed?

Hats and gloves made to army regulation patterns

And now, for more excitement,  over 70 of the patterns that were developed for the film are available in a fabulous book, Centenary Stitches.  My copy arrived yesterday!

All our work, in print

But it's not just a book of knitting patterns, it also tells the story of the Crowder family, central to the  story, and lots about the making of the film and the search for contemporary knitting patterns.  I love the way the photograph below of Grace Crowder, the star of the film and the narrator... 

Grace Crowder

 led to Elizabeth Lovick designing a new pattern which closely follows the design of the original

Close up of Grace Crowder's cardigan, designed by Elizabeth Lovick (I love the collar detail)

There is a lovely photograph of the shawl I made in the book too

Pine cones shawl

If you buy this book (and I hope you do) a proportion of the proceeds will go to Combat Stress, the veterans mental health charity and the restoration fund for Thimbleby Church, the church at the centre of the village where the Crowders lived and one of the sets used in the film. You can buy it directly from the Northern Lace website and eventually (when a couple of glitches have been sorted) from Amazon UK as well as Amazon.com in the USA, In fact please do buy it from Northern Lace as this will mean more money goes to these two worthwhile charities

I have loved joining in with this project, it has felt so worthwhile, and lovely to be a part of something big.  Nice too, to see all we knitters acknowledged in the credits of the book as well as the film.  We intend to keep the Facebook page up for a while so that we can show off the projects we have knitted for ourselves from the book.  I am beginning with a hat.

xx

C