something to celebrate
the Unstitched Coif exhibition has been and gone - my plans to visit were quashed by a cracked rib which stopped me from travelling at the last minute but there was a happy bonus....... along with the other participants i got an email: Hello, I’m Susan North, curator of fashion before 1800 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Toni Buckby’s V&A supervisor. Thank you for participating in Toni’s project ‘an unstitched coif . . . ‘. I’m writing to ask if you would be willing to donate your embroidered coif to the V&A. Toni’s group embroidery project has been a huge success beyond our initial modest estimates. We didn’t think there would be more than 40 people willing to participate. When Toni told me that she had hundreds of requests to join, I limited the V&A acquisition to 40 for logistical reasons –not having seen any of the results. When I went to Toni’s display at Bloc Projects in Sheffield on 20 December 2023, I was blown away by the ingenuity, imagination, inven