Tuesday 24 November 2009

Embroidered Radio Times cover


There's a very middle-class-British obsession with covering up shameful objects. Wheelie bins have to be disguised as a cottage garden with stickers, loo rolls have to be shielded from the gaze under a knitted crinoline lady, and even I remember seeing a cover in the Lakeland kitchen shop for that most shameful of household items, washing-up liquid.

I've never seen the Radio Times as an item of middle-class shame, but obviously in the eyes of the More Bazaar Items By Patons book, it is. Here's a beautifully embroidered Radio Times cover, created with Coats Anchor Tapisserie wool on "bincarette" canvas with a cotton lining. Could be very useful for those weeks when Jeremy Clarkson is on the front cover - I'd much rather look at an embroidered basket of flowers.

With a little adaptation, intellectuals could create a New Scientist or The Economist cover and then hide their copies of Chat and Take a Break within.

3 comments:

  1. In the US they also cover toilet paper rolls with crochet (was never sure how to get roll out though). It's very much one of those things your granny would do though, probably found more in a blue collar home.

    I think you should embroider a cover for The Chap. It's calling out for your work.

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  2. It is nice to know that toilet roll covers are a transatlantic phenomenon - maybe we should do a study comparing UK and USA styles and social demographics.

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  3. I sense a coffee table book in our future...

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