Picture a landscape of rich and endless wetland, filled with wildlife beyond imagining. People are few and the place is wild. These were the Fens of East England. Since Roman times, the ingenuity of man has drained and reclaimed, to create a vast agricultural plain known as the vegetable basket of Britain. Less than a thousandth of that original wetland remains; a handful of nature reserves and wildlife retreated to the edges of ditches. Each year, an inch of drained soil is lost to the atmosphere, speeding us toward climate change. The people are divorced from what once surrounded them.
In my professional life, I work for the Wildlife Trust in a place called Great Fen, where we are trying to restore some of the lost wetland and bring back wildlife.
Above left: an excavated pit shows layers of peat, which you will see represented in the cloak. Above right: Lorna at work. Below right: a piece of dried peat.
To succeed in repairing the landscape, the physical healing of the land must come with a reconnection to place and a remembering of its value. There are thousands of years of carbon locked into the depths of the black peat soils. But the flat and featureless land, devoid of the plants and animals that were once here, is hard to appreciate as you speed by in a car, and the science behind climate change can be dry and technical.
In my sewing life, I use cloth and needle to create for loved ones. I make garments that express individuality and bring comfort and joy.
How could I harness my passions and bring the Fenland restoration and the story of peat to life for local people?
Science into stories is a movement Great Fen are creating to use arts and performance to engage people in nature. For my part, the power of story is key, but I needed to weave the narrative visually as well as with words. The idea of a storytelling cloak was born. Could I capture both the layers of hidden history built up in the peat soil beneath our feet and the journey of the wildlife returning on the surface? Well, I certainly have been giving it a try.
Above: Planning out the placement of appliqué on the cloak, including a wide variety of plants, insects, and animals.
This is a scrap bag project, made of nothing but leftovers from previous creations and fabric reclaimed from the garments on the last chance rail at the charity shop. I've pieced them together to form an Overland Cloak. Soil and wildlife on the outer and a starry night sky on the inner. Animals and plants appliquéd or stitched on to bring the story to life.
I knew at the start this would be a labour of love and a long undertaking, but even I had underestimated it! I tell my staff on the land restoration that everything takes three times longer than you would think - this has been even more... at least six months, with many more to come.
The outer cloak is mainly wool and suiting fabrics. The scraps are all different weights, so hanging time and trimming before hemming were essential, because the fabrics 'dropped' differently. Needless to say, the velvets and satins of the lining are more stable, so creating a marriage of the two was a real challenge. The cloak languished on the hanger for many months while I focussed on creating the animals and plants, and studiously avoided the issue of hemming.
Bog oak (pictured above left) hand carved into a toggle for the cloak (pictured above right). Toggles are sewn onto the cloak using lime bast cordage.
One thing was clear from early on though: a full-length woollen cloak is a weighty thing, and the imperative to twirl is ever present, meaning it needed a closure that would be up to the job. Fortunately, I work with a team of dedicated and skilled folk who are all crafty in their own way. I enlisted the help of a colleague who is a skilled wood carver to create me some toggles - but not from just any wood.
Buried in the peat that forms the soil of Great Fen are historical forests. Trees felled by sea-level rise and extreme weather and then preserved by the wetland - complete with their bark, and sometimes even the insects that lived in them. As the drained soils erode, this history is revealed as great trunks of what is known as 'bog oak'. This was the challenge I set my carver. Could a bog oak become a button? The answer is a gloriously lustrous ebony-like yes.
So far, I have birds and dragonflies swooping through the skies of the cloak, a deer and hare amongst the grass, and a heron poised to catch a fish. There are so many other animals, fossils, and bog oaks to add in the coming months - but then the nature is still returning to the landscape as well, so maybe this is a story that will never be finished. I am trying to relax into the idea that this project may always be a work in progress.
Above: Lorna twirls the cloak at a community event, showing off the layers the landscape on the outer cloak, and a starry night sky on the inner. Photo by Andrew Moore.
What I have seen is that the cloak has a life and character of its own and it is already doing its work of telling stories - almost like a piece of sewing magic. It has come to agricultural shows and events, started conversations, and twirled on online videos thousands of times. Most lately, it kept me warm at an apple and harvest celebration where no-one could resist asking about it and accidentally learning about peat, wetlands, and their place in local history. It is gradually stitching local people back together with the nature that is returning to the Fen.
As the people value what we are creating, they explore the nature there. Walkers are filled with wellbeing as they pause among the reeds. Children explore the outdoors, memories of adventure, tree climbing, bird spotting are born and those children become the future champions of what we will leave behind. Farmers are inspired to try different farming methods which protect the soils by keeping them wetter and the climate is perhaps a little less changed. People feel hope where before there was none.
All from a dream and a stitch and a scrap bag. A sewing nature conservationist, a whimsical pattern... and a dream for future nature.
Find out more about the nature of the Fens and the Great Fen at www.greatfen.org.uk.
