DRAWN THREAD, TEA CLOTH

Square tea cloth. Three drawn thread borders. First and third are the same, drawn thread along all edges with needlewoven flower in corner. Second border has needleweaving repeated pattern.
Notes: (already typed up on back)
Kazimira’s story as told to Miriam Dunnion over a period of years in the 1980’s.
Kazimira was born in Eastern Poland to a farming family. The daughters of the family were keen needlewomen as well as hard workers on the family mixed farm. In February 1940 after the partition of Poland between Germany and Russia, the Russian Army gathered many of the people of Eastern Poland and transported them to the forests of Siberia, above the Arctic Circle in appalling conditions, to be timber cutters.
Kazimira was seventeen years old and she and her sister had only a few minutes to gather belongings from their home. Their most treasured possessions over the months to come were several needles, spools of linen thread and a small pair of embroidery scissors. Along with essentials these items were carried in one of their mother’s linen pillow cases which apparently became their first piece of embroidery.
By the end of 1942 the Russians had decided to allow the Poles the opportunity to leave Russia as refugees with the prospect of the formation of a Polish Army in Uzbekistan. Finally Kazimira joined the Polish Army and became a nurse on one of the most amazing journeys of that period. The army group that Kazimira was with walked out of Russia and through the Middle East to finally reach Italy in the dying days of the war. When peace was declared, the Poles in Italy were declared stateless people by Sir Winston Churchill and became refugees again, confined to war damaged buildings in Italy for a further eighteen months before being allowed to enter Britian.
Kazimira would never talk of her experiences on that long walk in any detail other than to say “My needle and thread was keeping my mind from going, I was alone, no sister but Polish Army issued everyone linen pillow cases so I had linen to work, to create when everything is gone, destroyed.”
The drawn thread tablecloth was created from a Polish linen pillow slip and was created between 1942 and 1945 between Uzbekistan and Italy as a lifeline to sanity, a reassurance of a link with the past and as an almost defiant creation of something fine and beautiful. I believe the pillow slip was worked during 1946 when Kazimira was a refugee confined to a bombed school building in Italy. Kazimira lived in England for about 30 years before migrating to a relative in Western Australia. The items covered by this Deed of Gift were a gift from Kazimira to me. They remain a memorial to an incredibly strong and courageous lady.