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Operation Overlord was the codename given to the Normandy campaign of 1944 which began on D Day 6th Jun. Allied forces under the command of General Eisenhower began the liberation of West Europe from Germany by landing on the Normandy coast. After three weeks of heavy fighting the Allied troops captured Cherbourg. Tanks broke through German defences, liberating both Paris and Brussels and crossing the German frontier on September 12th 1944. The D Day landings were an important turning point of the Second World War and the Overlord embroidery was stitched as a constant reminder of the military campaign.
Lord Dulverston, a member of the Wills tobacco family, is responsible for commissioning the Overlord embroidery, created in commemoration of the events of D Day. He was not involved in the conflict but as time went by he became more and more interested in what had happened. During the 1960s he wanted to create a permanent record, deciding that it could take the form of a modern Bayeux tapestry. I 1968 he commissioned Sandra Lawrence, an up and coming artist, to design the embroidery.
It is comprised of 34 panels, each 8ft (2.5m) long. Sandra started work on the mammoth task by drawing up rough sketches which were then shown to a committee consisting of three senior officers from the Armed forces, Air Chief Marshall Sir Donald Evans, Admiral Sir Charles Madden and General Sir Charles Jones. This committee directed and advised on the contents of each panel.
Once the roughs were approved, Sandra painted full size colour cartoons. They were passed on to the embroiderers at the Royal School of Needlework who set about the task of transforming the paintings into the finished stitched piece. Strong cotton fabric was stretched over wooden frames for each panel, then on top of this, the linen backing fabric was fixed. The drawings were then transferred from paper to fabric, first onto tracing paper and then to the fabric using a process called ‘pricking and pouncing’, whereby thousands of holes are pierced through the tracing paper around the outline of the design and powder brushed over them leaving an imprint on the base fabric. When the trace is removed the dots are joined together to produce the complete outline.
The fabrics for the appliqué were chosen with careful consideration of colour and texture. Around 102 yards (100m) of fabrics were used, including original materials such as uniforms and parachute silk. Working from the centre of each panel the embroiderers began to stitch the pre-cut shapes to the backing and slowly each one began to take shape. The unworked portions at the upper and lower borders were rolled up and as the needlework grew, the linen was unwound and the top and the bottom sections filled in. Applique was used as the main technique with surface embroidery – long and short stitch, satin stitch and French knots – added for additional detail. The task was so great that the project took more than five years to complete, but once finished the embroidery went on tour to the United States, Canada, Edinburgh and London, until finding its permanent home at the D Day museum in Portsmouth in 1984.
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