My Grandmother FLORENCE EMILY TREGANOWAN…..Lasting influences.
When I first arrived here in Maryborough, I went to Worsley Cottage, the original Historic Homestead, just literally around the corner. It didn’t really leave much of an impression on me, except for the gorgeous rambling cottage garden I passed through to get to the front door…..which was very low, all the doorways were so much lower than they are now.
Built in 1894, of Bluestone, it had a simple central passage design, with tiny bedrooms either side, opening up into a large kitchen spanning the width of the house, with a huge black cooking range.
WHAT I REALLY DID NOTICE, were the small mutely coloured Rag Rugs, in every doorway and by the kitchen Hearth.
I was immediately back, a small child, in my Grandmother’s house…..for she had the very same rugs at the entrance to every room.
Having lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War…..she knew how to make do. Every one of those little rugs, was handmade, reusing a hessian sugar bag or potato sack as backing…..then laboriously cutting up old clothes into carefully measured strips, hooking these through onto a pattern she would have drawn on with dressmakers chalk, then, when completed, they were trimmed neatly across the top (like clipping a hedge). From memory, there were only five colour options…..Maroon, Navy, Black White and Grey…..but the patterns were as varied as her imagination.
What happened to those little rugs, made with such skill and care???. As a young, newly married Woman, when she died and her house was cleaned out….I had no interest in such things….neither did my siblings.
I imagine they were……simply……thrown…..away!!!
MA© Summer 2018
to be continued