Lake District Sewing Machine Retreat

Today you'll enjoy a full-day workshop with Kim using our Bernina sewing machines!

You'll enjoy a full-day excursion to north Cumbria today, starting in Carlisle, Cumbria’s only city. Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery care for a collection of almost 1 million objects that tell the story of Carlisle and Cumbria. Here, we’ll enjoy a private viewing of their quilt collection with one of their curatorial team.

Lanercost Priory is a well-preserved medieval monastic site, founded in 1169. When the priory was founded, its site would have seemed ideal. It was close to Hadrian’s Wall, an excellent source of building stone, and it lay on the river Irthing, surrounded by plentiful woodland. However, the location of the priory in the turbulent and violent border region between England and Scotland, was to dictate its fortunes over the next 400 years.

We, however, are here to see the Lanercost Priory Dossal, a 24-foot x 4 foot embroidered wall hanging, commissioned in 1881 by the 9th Earl of Carlisle. The dossal was designed by William Morris, founder of the 19th-century Arts & Crafts movement, and was embroidered by the ladies of the parish and hung behind the altar at Lanercost Priory on Easter Day 1887. It was removed for restoration in 2012 and returned in 2014.

Today, we have another full-day workshop with Kim using our Bernina sewing machines.

Levens Hall is a magnificent Elizabethan mansion built around a 13th- century pele tower. The hall is home to the earliest English patchwork, dated to 1708, along with Jacobean furniture, fine paintings and many other objects. It is also home to the world’s oldest topiary gardens. We will enjoy a guided tour here, before taking some free time to enjoy the gardens or relax with a cup of tea in the café.

Cumbria is the birthplace of the Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends. Quakerism started in England in the second half of the 17th century, during the aftermath of the English Civil War. The Quaker Tapestry, the idea of Quaker Anne Wynn-Wilson, consists of 77 panels and illustrates the history of Quakerism from the 17th century to the present day.

The tapestry is worked in crewel embroidery using woollen yarns on a handwoven woollen background. In addition to using four well-known stitches (split stitch, stem stitch, chain stitch and Peking knot), Wynn-Wilson invented a new corded stitch, known as Quaker stitch, to allow for tight curves on the lettering. 4,000 men, women and children aged from 3 to 93, from 15 countries worked on the panels between 1981 and 1989. In 1994, the tapestry found a permanent home at Kendal’s historic Quaker Meeting House, where we’ll view the panels and other exhibits on display.

Spend the full day enjoying a workshop with Kim, using our Bernina sewing machines.

In the late Victorian period, a new philosophy of art and design emerged, influenced by designer William Morris and the author and critic John Ruskin. The Arts and Craft Movement believed in the value of traditional, handmade crafts, in response to the proliferation of mass-produced items in the late 19th century.

Annie Garnett was a formidable designer and entrepreneur whose textiles influenced the revival of hand spinning and weaving in the Lake District. She established and managed a Spinnery in Windermere, producing beautiful textiles using traditional methods, often inspired by the flowers in her garden and the Lake District Landscape. Annie was a key figure in the Arts & Crafts Movement.

Blackwell is one of the best surviving unaltered examples of the Arts and Craft style buildings in England. We’ll explore this Grade I-listed building, as well as other objects by leading Arts & Crafts designers, before enjoying an exhibition on Annie Garnett.

Towards the end of his life, Ruskin identified the Langdale linen industry as his most successful practical attempt to improve a local economy through a ‘Rural Arts Revival’, something better known today as the Arts and Crafts Movement. Ruskin preached truth to local materials and traditional craft skills, the job satisfaction instinct in handwork as opposed to the factory, making for need and joy rather than profit. The Ruskin Museum contains an extensive collection of hand-spun, hand-woven linen, and many fine examples of Ruskin Lace, a beautiful, traditional handmade lace that incorporates drawn thread work, cut work and need lace techniques to create a range of geometric patterns within a piece of linen.

We’ll dine together at the hotel this evening.