Wednesday, September 11, 2013

A Little Sew-And-Sew

Perhaps you have heard, perhaps not, but the Maryland Historical Society has painstakingly created a full-sized replica of the Star-Spangled Banner, the thirty-foot by forty-two foot flag that flew at Fort McHenry on September 14, 1814, during the British Empire's unsuccessful assault on Baltimore during the War of 1812—you know, the flag and battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write a little ditty alternately known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Our National Anthem."

I happen to know "painstaking" is a pretty accurate description of the work involved since Katie-Bar-The-Door was one of the volunteers who gave up multiple weekends to put it together, in her case something like twenty-eight hours (on top of her regular day job). Others gave more time than that.

As for the Monkey, I added a single symbolic stitch and then moved some tables around. Arts-and-crafty I'm not.

The flag will be flown at Fort McHenry on Defenders Day, this Saturday, September 14, 2013. If you're in the area, come on by.
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3 comments:

  1. MaggieSeptember 12, 2013 at 11:32 AM

    Wow! Beautiful.

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  2. Mythical MonkeySeptember 12, 2013 at 12:57 PM

    And they used the same sort of materials and methods the original flag makers used 200 years ago.

    The flag material was unexpectedly thin, like stretchy, see-through cheese cloth, but 40 years ago somebody did the same kind of project using modern fabrics and the it was so heavy, it snapped the flag pole in half. So this time, they went strictly old school.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KCSeptember 13, 2013 at 5:21 PM

    Fascinating that they used old school methods. What an amazing project.

    ReplyDelete

Direct all complaints to the blog-typing sock monkey. I only work here.