My step-grandmother would have loved this show: Unbound At Two Temple Place reviewed

My step-grandmother Connie was an inspired needlewoman. For ten years, as a volunteer for the charity Fine Cell Work, she taught embroidery to inmates at HM Prison Wandsworth. She once told me that she was tired of being a ‘committee woman’: ‘I wanted to be down in the arena with the sawdust.’ She believed in rehabilitation, not punishment. She never asked what her pupils had done; she didn’t want to know. All that mattered was finding calm and purpose in the next stitch. Picture her, silver-haired, elegant, teaching her chaps to embroider pheasants, artichokes and, her favourite, pineapples on to cushions. She was a member of the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court and one of the embroideresses who remade the Royal Opera House curtain. Her most fruitful stitching time was through the two weeks of Wimbledon, pausing only when her beloved Rafa Nadal was preparing to serve.

Connie, who died peacefully in her sleep last week, would have loved this exhibition.