Maker: Jenny Sutton

Panel number: 510

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Margaret McColl

Relationship to maker: My mother – a very strong role model

Margaret Crawford McColl (born Gundry) came from an age of wonderful stoic women. She would have loved to go to university but was apprenticed to a seamstress at the age of 14 when her beloved father died. The skills she learned there she passed on to her two daughters. 

She went nursing in her late teens but was unable to graduate as she contracted pleurisy and spent some time recovering in Ewart hospital (Wellington). She married in her early 20s and was father and mother to her family for three years while her husband was at war in the Solomon Islands. She then looked after him as well when he was invalided home with malaria.

She was somewhat unique for her time in that she worked full time, first as a reader for the Dominion newspaper and later doing clerical work. Margaret instilled in her daughters and two sons a lifelong love of reading and ensured that her daughters had the university education that she missed out on.

Margaret is remembered with much love and respect, and for spending hours in the garden (her happy place), her lovely meals, and her sheer gritty determination.

Panel materials: I painted my mother in her wedding dress with acrylic paint. The flower border is from scraps of Sanderson upholstery fabric (a 1950s design). They are sewn on with blanket stitch. The pearl necklace is from a set of my mother’s pearls. The design is backed onto recycled curtain lining. I didn’t purchase any of the materials - they were ones I already had including the embroidery cottons which were inherited from my lovely mother-in-law, Pam Sutton.