“Most people” murmured The Husband recently inspecting my day’s work and perhaps implying a mild form of insanity “would just have gone out and bought upholstery fabric…”

Last year I consulted Jackie Williams who till recently ran the House of Needlework, Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury. Using my chair’s dimensions and the original covering she marked-up canvas for me. With tapestry wool charts we then selected colours as true as possible to the textile I wished to copy. I’ve been beavering away since on needlepoint work so to re-upholster Grandmother’s Prie Dieu (Prayer Chair). Without Jackie’s experience and wisdom I’d never have managed to make a start…

Always fascinated by this chair whose geometric covering has long-enchanted me, I’d frequently sit on the floor in front of it as a child. Just looking… the patterns unlike anything else I’d ever seen…

Latterly the fabric, brittle and darkened by age, was no longer fit for purpose; so, paying homage to the original I’ve embarked on a long, yet sedentary journey, from my tapestry stand. A journey not dissimilar to my treks across Europe in that there are starting points and there are finishing points. In between there are good days and bad. (In needlework-speak the bad days are those I painstakingly unpick hours of work).

The longer I work to copy patterns the more in awe I’ve become of whoever wove it. Patterns spring from its centre and repeat in mirror-image along its length. Intriguingly, the colours on the vertical lines are strictly formalised, but for patterns in-between the weaver has boldly, with inherent flair, used combinations without discernible repetition creating a veritable riot of artistic colour.

With help from Google I now believe the fabric is a North American Indian (Navajo) textile. With that discovery - from its tell-tale geometrical shapes - arrived a putting-together of family history. In the final years of the C19th my Grandfather Lutton was out in Canada’s Gold Rush. He must then have sailed back with the cloth in his old tin trunk (still in family use) returned to farming, and married Grandmother. My Aunt, aged 102, tells me the chair used to stand next to the oak crib at Yockings Gate, Whitchurch (the old family farm). She assumes it was used as a nursing chair.

It is with hope and love and confidence I stitch paying homage to the old. Perhaps a new generation will become bewitched by the mesmeric shapes and patterns just as I did. Perhaps, as was father, future children shall be nursed from the chair… “Oh! What a world to bring children into” I hear some say with David Attenborough warning of potential climatic catastrophe…

Helen Keller observed “Optimism is faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence” … I have need of hope with which to contemplate the future. Not a blind hope. But a hope with recognition that a sustainable future dictates we must embrace both change and environmental accountability.

** Latest travel update: Brittany Ferries - to whom I’ve expressed grateful thanks - have come up trumps and are, after all, permitting me to travel from Plymouth to Roscoff with bike + dog. I set sail in a few day’s time.