“I have a very large ledger. A huge filing system.”

I continue to stitch on my Cromwell Narrative Cloth, and it continues to make slow but steady progress. Indeed, I have now almost completed what Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell describes as his second life. It’s ridiculously heavy and I have lost track of the overall length, but I plan to join the whole second life together later today - and will be able to get the tape measure out. While the Cloth develops, I am posting reflections about my earlier Cromwell Trilogy stitchery. This is the fourth in a series of posts about my first Wolf Hall Quilt, made between 2020 and 2021. It’s a textile piece that comes with a very strong sense of time and place, and the restrictive circumstances in which it was made had a significant impact on the finished work, which only became apparent after it was complete. This post follows on from a post in which I pondered the design issues I had given myself by not planning the piece overall but letting it develop incrementally.

As I wrote last week, the difficulties with which I presented myself by working within the constraints of the stitched chapter titles were considerable, but quilting Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was an entirely pleasurable - if stretching - experience. I developed a very specific process for my stitching and this served a dual purpose: the opportunity to be completely absorbed in my sewing, and also to be completely absorbed in the text, making use of both paper copies and the new recordings of the audiobooks read by Ben Miles that were released in 2020.

I started by re-reading the three novels and, as I read, I noted all the textile references.* Then, as I started to quilt each Wolf Hall chapter, I checked through the textile references and then re-read the whole chapter quickly, making notes on index cards as I went. I had an extensive collection of colour coded index cards for each chapter: white for potential motifs and ideas for designs; pink for colour references; and green for the names of those who sewed. The index cards were compiled on a chapter-by-chapter basis, and so the content for the quilt grew incrementally.

To demonstrate - using Entirely Beloved Cromwell - here are the ideas and colour references I scribbled onto my index cards; those highlighted were included in the quilt:

White index cards: Potential Motifs

Le Morte d’Arthur; White lilies; Pearl necklace - dried peas; Awkward little back stitch; Crucifix on a gold chain; Crushed herbs rising around you as you walked; How I miss my master; Kat’s holy medal: “I had a medal. But I lost it.”; If Mark reckons I’m a murderer, that’s only because he thinks I look like one; Eight anterooms; Sprig of rosemary; Maître Cremuel; What do you know of how I occupy my hours?; Every day I miss the Cardinal of York; Wolsey gives Cromwell a ring - a package – his turquoise ring is missing; Repainting of the coat of arms - “The choughs could look more lively.”; Why does God test us? (Johane); His heart is leading him; Carvings of leaves and flowers - look at this description; “Seeds?” Johane says. “He is planning to take root?”; Not a stitch have the women added to their sewing since he has been in the room; In Lent I ration my patience; One simple thing; A WORLD WHERE ANNE CAN BE QUEEN IS A WORLD WHERE CROMWELL CAN BE CROMWELL; Inside he is beside himself with rage; Dish of warden pears, roasted with spices; The Cardinal’s Descent into Hell; Golden birds sit on golden branches, and a golden king sits on a hill of coins

Pink index cards: Colours:

Turquoise ring; White lilies, snowy rabbit, Alice More’s ivory pins; Thomas More’s red carpet; Fallen-fruit silks of mulberry, gold and plum; Ribbon of pink silk; The cardinal’s scarlet robes; Golden bird, golden branches, golden king; Green rushes; Pink and white - Mary Shelton; Black glance, black buds, Gardiner’s black sleeve, Gregory’s black dogs, black starlings, Lady Anne’s black looks; Henry’s blue eyes; Red meat, red brick house; Preserved oranges and honey, rose water, rose petals, violets; Pearl and coral bracelets

To start, I identified a phrase or a motif which would go onto each chapter section. I sketched the motif and then transferred it to the fabric, using pencil. Some items were stitched into every chapter in which they appeared in the text: Kat’s holy medal, François’ ruby, and Wolsey’s turquoise ring. To begin with, I didn’t want to add too much lettering, but in the event some phrases were too irresistible not to stitch. Some ideas had to be abandoned as my drawing skills weren’t sufficiently good, or I realised that a carefully sketched design would not work in stitch. And as already noted, I had limited space in which to add detail so sometimes practicality won.

When I look back on the index cards now, I can still be surprised by what didn’t find its way on to the quilt. Three of my favourite things are missing: Gregory’s letters (‘And now no more for lack of time’); the orange and lemon who walk down the street after the Twelfth Night revels; and the phrase ‘A WORLD WHERE ANNE CAN BE QUEEN IS A WORLD WHERE CROMWELL CAN BE CROMWELL’, which I wrote out in capital letters such was my desire to include it. I ended up stitching that separately. Luckily, I never saws the Wolf Hall Quilt as a single piece, but as part of a series.

Photography: © Michael Wicks

Throughout the sewing, I kept copious records, photographing everything and recording what I was sewing on a day-to-day basis. Once I had completed the first round of stitching for all the chapters, I then travelled backwards starting at To Wolf Hall, identifying gaps, and drawing up further lists. I added in a reference to Jenneke; finished off the Make or Mar section, which I had found to distressing to complete in one go; filled a quilting gap right at the beginning. Just as I thought I had finished, I realised I had made no direct reference to the Holy Maid, and I felt that this needed to be rectified. By this time, I was starting to have some pain in my hands, so the lettering that tells us that she was not holy and not a maid is not as neat as it could be, but perhaps, given her fate, this was appropriate.

I will write in future posts about my response to the finished quilt - for now, I will simply say that the design issues were not fixable and I wasn’t satisfied with what I ended up with. But I was satisfied with the process. I’ve continued to use index cards, and I continue to make detailed process notes that go into a growing pile of notebooks. As Cromwell himself says in Bring Up the Bodies, “Minute that.” I think we take a similar approach to keeping records.

*I will write a post about the act of stitching in the Trilogy - a theme which I find eternally fascinating - towards the end of 2024, when the slow Cromwellian read, hosted by Master

Simon Haisell

is reaching its end. There is some highly significant stitchery in The Mirror and the Light, and I don’t want to spoil Wolf Crawl for anyone who hasn’t read that far yet.

In my studio

I haven’t been physically in my studio much this past week. But I have been working on Cromwell a lot from home, and this led me to worry that I wasn’t getting enough studio time. But then I realised, studio time doesn’t necessarily have to mean being physically in the studio itself. Sometimes it does - my studio is where a lot of thinking happens, and any work that requires my big extendable quilting table. I paint on to cloth there, and sketch out ideas. I make Cromwellian playing cards there. But sometimes studio time can be elsewhere. This week, I have been focusing on finishing some background stitching for Cromwell at the Battle of Garigliano and I could do that comfortably from home.

But later today I will be going to the studio because I want to join the Battle of Garigliano onto the rest of Cromwell’s second life. And measure it. I want to get joining done today partly because I want to see a significant amount of progress (otherwise I will be tinkering with the background and margins for months), and partly because I want to see how the whole section is balanced when it’s put together. I didn’t put the whole Wolf Hall Quilt together until right at the very end - and by then the balance was fixed. That was an error I don’t want to repeat.

What caught my eye?

A rather disconcerting thought - I haven’t been out Cromwelling this week! So nothing relevant is jumping immediately to the forefront my mind. It’s mainly been a week of consolidation - checking references, looking at dates, stitching backgrounds in neutral colours.

So instead, here is a picture of some little cubes I made about 16 years ago. I’d put my back out and I couldn’t sew, so I made these instead. I’d almost forgotten about them, but found them again this week, and hung them from my bookshelves. Do you know, I think they date from a world before the publication of Wolf Hall. Now I can’t imagine my life without it.