at sula we love washing.

we wash finished garments, fabric lengths, shrink and garment dye.

and, in our new flower and vegetable garden, we can now line dry.

as we were drying next season’s samples, textiles and production, we started to think about the scores of poems, stories and songs about the ‘washday blues’, including singing along to dolly parton’s 1972 song with this title. laundry used to be labour-intensive and hard physical work undertaken by women. it took place on a monday as leftovers were eaten that day and laundering took over the parlour.

the tradition was to wash on monday, iron on tuesday, mend on wednesday, churn on thursday, clean on friday, bake on saturday, rest on sunday.

we found this wonderful, and rare, photograph — informal snapshots were usually taken on special occasions — of two women smiling for the camera, wearing their washday blues workwear dresses.

dolly parton’s washday blues (1972)

‘just rubbin’ and a scrubbin’ and a raisin’ ’em out
i gotta hang ’em out early i hope the sun comes out.’