Finally Finished

It's finally done! The Lithuanian reverse migration panel for the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry has been finished. It's on display right now in the village of Prestonpans, where the effort was coordinated, and it will go on a world tour beginning this summer.

Lithuanian Scots

My actual contribution to the stitching is minimal (being that I stitched less than one and half names!), but I contributed to the story. And I'm very happy to see some of what my family experienced represented on there.

Tapestry Update

As I mentioned, I was very disappointed to learn last June that the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry did not include the panel to which I contributed parts of my family story. Several months later, though, I learned that it was only delayed, not abandoned, and work was continuing! I was really pleased to get that news. Today I met with one of the other contributors who is doing much of the actual stitching so that I could stitch in my family names, Kisielius and Raulinaitis, myself. I only had a short time, so I didn't actually get to finish (and some of my work was a bit dodgy so might need repaired), but at least I got to put a hand in. I'm looking forward to seeing it complete.

The latest design sketch.

My great-grandfather's side.

My great-grandmother's side.

As far as I got.

Tapestry Launch

It's been ages since I've written anything. And I really should have, as I even made contact with some new "long lost" relatives back at the start of March! From the Kisielius group this time. But I've been so busy trying to finish my dissertation that I've not had any time for extra writing. I'm only writing this brief post now because the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry is finally complete and the grand opening was this weekend. This is the promotional video:


Jessee and I rode our bikes out to Prestonpans where it's being displayed, just to see it. I was very excited to see the "reverse diaspora" panel of the Scottish Lithuanian community that I'd contributed ideas to. To my surprise (and dismay!) it wasn't there. There were three other panels for the Scottish communities that had settled in Lithuania, but the fourth one was missing. I'm not sure what happened, but I was very disappointed. I suspect they weren't able to find enough stitchers and it didn't get completed. A real shame. The thought crossed my mind that I should contact them and offer to do the stitching myself but, as I said, I've really been bogged down with writing - that and I have no clue how to do needlepoint!

These were the panels that they did have up:

Scottish Diaspora Tapestry

I just learned of the fantastic Scottish Diaspora Tapestry project.  They're starting a project to chronicle the spread of Scottish heritage around the globe.  I was delighted to find that they plan to include the connection between Scotland and Lithuania on the tapestry and are looking for people with Scottish-Lithuanian heritage to be involved.  I've already offered to play a part.  I'll probably be most useful for the "stories" and "research" steps (if I haven't already missed those parts), but they do say that, for the stitching, "no experience is necessary, only enthusiasm!", so we'll see.

This is what I sent in my initial email:

This is a great project! I viewed the Presontonpans Tapestry a while back and it was fantastic. I'm from Scottish-Lithuanian roots, and I'd be keen to be involved in the project. To give a brief synopsis of my family's story, my Scottish-Lithuanian ancestors lived in Glasgow about 100 years ago before the (scarcely remembered) Anglo-Russian Military Convention. When that went into force, the family was split apart and my branch re-settled in Lithuania. They were displaced again at WWII and settled in the US, which is where I was born. A couple years back I was admitted to study for a PhD at Edinburgh Uni without any knowledge that my Lithuanian ancestors had been here. It was just by chance that my elderly gran mentioned that we might still have relatives here, which (after a fair bit of family history research) turned out to be the case. I've since reconnected with the Scottish branch of the family, who were equally surprised and delighted to learn they had Lithuanian-American relatives.