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1910: A story of a quilt and a forgotten seamstress who worked in the halls of Buckingham palace – both have a story to tell…..
The Forgotten Seamstress
What you need to know before your trail
London 1910
Maria works as a seamstress for the Royal family. She loves her job but one day catches the eye of the Prince of Wales and is captivated by him and the intrigue that surrounds him.
But this friendship causes trouble and gossip turns sour. Maria’s life takes a darker turn and she is thrown into a mental asylum for the stories that surround her. Stories that would send a woman to a lifetime of despair and isolation.
She puts every tear, every heartbreak and every hope into the quilt she makes. When the quilt is discovered many years later, can it reveal the truth behind what happened to her?
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The world that Liz Trenow has created is a marvellous one that is vivid, heartbreaking and poignant at the same time. It evokes the life of a woman who goes to sew in Buckingham palace and ends up in a situation no one could have foreseen least of all her.
To have started life in an orphanage known as the castle for its fortified walls must have been horrendous and having then moved to a grand palace to sew for the royal family only to become embroiled in a scandal that would imprison her in more ways than one for the rest of her life is both shocking and heartbreaking.
At first the sewing is beautiful and real. Quilts were made to mark an occasion and when together tell the story of a life:
“A series of squares each one larger than the last, like a painting within a painting within yet another painting, and each one so different from the next”
But the setting of the asylum is cold and brutal revealing how women were locked up for such minor and tragic misdemeanors. Shocking and heartbreaking. From the photos it looks organised and neat –
“But there was also a harsher reality: shots of long , empty wards furnished wit plain white iron bedsteads”
Throughout all this, the sewing represents hope and an escape and the world of a seamstress is an enchanting one. The story brought to life with a mixture of live cassette tapes and the present day research of Caroline Meadows into the tale of the quilt.
A well woven tale in every sense of the word.
To see the quilt on Liz Trenows website – liztrenow.com/the-forgotten-seamstress/marias-quilt/
Booktrailer Review
Susan @thebooktrailer:
What a lovely gorgeous novel with a sad yet poignant story. True facts mixed with the story of an heirloom and a lost art of quilt making. This should be a film and not before too long for it would be a joy to see the vivid images you see in your mind come to life on film.
There are so many layers to this story that like a quilt each part reads like a section of a quilt – the asylum pieces are different from the royal squares which are different again to the present day scraps of fabric. And then there are the tapes which provide a thread of the past weaving its way in and out of the narrative.
A work of art.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Twitter: @LizTrenow
Web: liztrenow.com
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