Following up on last week’s excursion into embroidered stories and the Prestonpans Tapestry, here are a few embroidered stories that I hope you will enjoy exploring.

Great events in history, and especially great conflicts, have been retold with needle and thread since the Middle Ages. The Bayeux Tapestry is the first example of this.

The two great conflicts of the modern era – World War I and II – have been retold in stitches through a few well-known and lesser-well-known projects that should be well-known.

Don’t be misled into thinking the stories told here are meant to glorify war. On the contrary, they commemorate the spirit of the people whose lives were profoundly changed because of the horrors of war. Sandra Lawrence, on her web page devoted to the Overlord Embroidery, quotes Lord Dulverton, who commissioned the embroideries. He explains:

The Embroidery is a tribute to our Country and Countrymen over the part played in defeating a great evil that sprang upon the Western World. It is not, and was never intended to be, a tribute to war, but to our people in whom it brought out in adversity so much that is good, determination, ingenuity, fortitude and sacrifice.

As Time distances us from these massive conflicts that affected all of our ancestors (and hence, us) in one way or another, the stories below serve as a good reminder.