sweetheart  | pin cushions

Another vintage obsession of mine….Sweetheart Pin Cushions were produced by service personnel as mementoes for loved ones by recuperating soldiers during World War One .These cushions were decorated with beads, sequins, bits of mirror, felt, and pre-printed panels memorialising soldiers’ regiments.  They  often included personal poetry and other proclamations of love.

Some of them were made out of commercially sold kits, while other examples were sewn using feed sacks and scrounged thread.  WWI soldiers often took up needlepoint as a way to pass the time while recuperating from war wounds, or used it as a form of occupational therapy following their traumatic experiences on the field.

There is something so moving about the delicately executed dedications of love, knowing that were played out against a backdrop of such horrific scenes of war.  The two extremes of the human condition juxtaposed…  It also warms my own heart to think that these have survived the generations, especially when you think that many of the men who made them, may themselves not have made it back home in person.