I’d forgotten this bit of ritual…
It must be about 10 years since I did any serious cross stitching. I never thought I would be doing it again, it had fallen out of favour. I had a period in my life when I did it all the time, and even made some money designing pieces for magazines and so on.
The work on pixels and stitches with Bo though, has brought it back to mind, and I find myself preparing…
Stretching the fabric on a frame, counting, sorting the colour palette, all so very familiar, but curiously distant. Like meeting an old friend you’ve fallen out with, but can’t quite remember why.
The work I’m doing is nothing like that I did in the past. And we’re back to that old discussion… That was definitely craft, this is definitely art. I feel it in my bones, that difference. But the ritual is the same. The physical process the same, the mental process totally different. But can you tell from the outside? Does it look different?
I don’t really want to talk about the work itself here, that’s for the joint blog “pix”, but I find myself looking over my own shoulder, as if in a time warp. Amused, puzzled as to how different it feels now.
www.a-n.co.uk/p/2910921
Here I am a few days on from the so-called dilemma. Feeling silly because it wasn’t really a dilemma at all. Being that “woman in a hurry” I’d gone off half-cocked. OF COURSE there wasn’t really a choice between the conceptual and the aesthetic. I would never have made the skirt into a piece that only looked nice and didn’t fit with my train of thought. And OF COURSE I couldn’t bring myself to make a piece that didn’t fit the aesthetic either. So, as the comments suggested… OF COURSE I had to just wait and see, do a bit more thinking, look at it and play with it. You’d think I would know things like this by now wouldn’t you? Apparently not. Each new piece of work throws up a puzzle that I agonise over, forgetting that the whole agonising thing has happened before, and it works out in the end.
Perhaps by writing it here… Oh… hang on… done that before… nothing seems to change does it?
Thanks to those who told me to wait a while and keep the faith, that an answer would present itself all in good time.
Anyway…
A not-quite perfect mend is I think the answer. Stitching the gingham into place, so that from a short distance away the pattern is uninterrupted, the eye undisturbed, but when you get up close you can see the scar, see that beautiful frayed edge. When I pinned it together over the patch, I discovered the cut-out wasn’t as large as I had first thought, and was in fact not a haphazard scoop of fabric, but a perfectly drawn and cut circle. I felt this was most satisfactory. A perfect hole. And as such, it has an echo from the tweed jacket’s holes. Another hole to shine a light through.
A friend volunteers in a charity clothing bank… she got me the tweed jackets… She has become my “spotter” and this week gave me a bag of stuff to look through that she said wouldn’t be used… I need to have a closer inspection, but from the initial peek in the bag it all looks very respectable… and there’s even a pair of size 6 brown patent shoes that are horrendously respectable! All I need is the skirt and I’ll have the whole outfit.
*shudder*
This is just the type of problem the a-n blog is perfectly suited to answering…
(Either through readers joining in the debate, or just through the act of writing it down and reading it myself.)
I am faced with a decision between an aesthetic choice or a conceptual choice.
Which way do I go?
I could make “the perfect mend”… make the skirt as respectable as I can, hide its flaws, present something “nice” to the world. I can do this. The gingham is a forgiving fabric, I could make the mend imperceptible unless under very close scrutiny… I have the skill…
But…
It is the flaws that attracted me in the first place… the bad sewing, the torn hem, that great big hole cut out. The way it frays is beautiful. There is a softness and a humanity about it that I love… I see the people that have touched it. I don’t want to mend that away.
How could I present this garment in a way that retains the flaws, shows the loveliness of them… but answers that respectability issue…
Which way do I go?
Hmmm… either the mend has to be secret and perfect, or beautiful and obvious…
There is a gap in my thinking here that needs to be sorted out before I start work.
I know which would look better… but it’s a cop out.
I know which “thinks” better… but it looks rubbish.
I will want to embroider text after the mend… maybe the answer lies in that?
No, that’s not right either, because that feels like cheating. It has to be right all the way through, not just fixed with a few pretty words at the end.
A ginghammy thinghammy… a phrase of my mum’s… she loved a ginghammy thinghammy. (My word processor doesn’t. Red lines all over the place!)
I pulled a bit of blue gingham out of someone else’s ragbag. The great thing about belonging to a group of quilters is that every now and again someone will come to the meeting with black bin bags in the back of their car. Oh the joy! The contents are tipped out, we rummage for two hours, and the majority of the bags’ contents go away to different homes. One woman’s rubbish another’s treasure.
So, the blue gingham, the stuff of schools in summer….
A skirt, home made, possibly in a lesson, by the child that wore it. It’s old, hand stitched badly in places, mended, torn. It is all cotton, not easy wash, non-iron, poly-cotton. It is crumpled, soft – really really soft. The hem has been unpicked to the fraying edge… either by the growing child’s mother, or by the thrifty quilter so as to use every scrap of fabric. The quilter has gouged a great lump out of this skirt, the size of half a dinner plate, a scoop from the hem, round in a lump and back again.
I think this will form part of my Respectable work.
Miraculously, in the bottom of a different bin bag was another piece of the same gingham, less worn, mysteriously cut on the bias. I think I’m going to mend the hole. Then I expect I will embroider something using the squares as a guide. Because of the squares, I pondered using it as part of the pixel work, perhaps taking it apart, but the garment as a whole is so evocative of my own school days it has to stay as it is, and I shall make it respectable again… then no doubt do something to it to make it not so.
While the pix project and blog are trotting along nicely, there’s other stuff going on too. I am still on the hunt for respectable clothing, having used up my stock of beige blouse, beige twinset, and brown tweed jacket. I’m wondering if I could get sponsorship from Marks and Spencer? Do you think they have a cupboard full of returned and unsellable respectable garments somewhere I could plunder – preferably some that have laid around unnoticed for about 30 years? I would quite like a just below the knee pleated skirt – box pleats preferably. Beige or brown would be nice, to go with the twin set, and in my size. I feel the need to wear these things.
Haha! If only my mother could hear me now! As a child up until the mid 70s I was dressed in “lovely warm autumn colours” and went to school in a brown and gold uniform. I loathe brown, and especially beige, and have not worn either since I’ve had the choice. But I must say, the thought of wearing these clothes with rude words stitched into them, derogatory comments and the like, adds a certain frisson to life! Where would I dare wear them? The twinset you have seen, the blouse I will photograph and post with this. The skirt I haven’t found yet, I think will have quite rude words stitched hidden between the pleats. When I sit down, the pleats fall open and reveal the truth of what I really think about the world.
And then of course there is The Sensible Shoe? Actually, I am a fan of the sensible shoe. I feel a girl should always wear shoes she can run away in, or administer a good hefty kick with… Ah… Rethink quickly then… So perhaps for this what I really need is not a sensible shoe, but a mid-heel court shoe. A non-shoe? Practical, nothing to cause offence. A neutral shoe. A brown leather court shoe. I feel sick already, so it must be the right choice! Maybe I’m looking for a Nice Shoe? Yes. Nice and Respectable.
I suspect I wouldn’t be able to wear these things for long, even with the subversive texts. The beigeness would seep into my bones and suck the life from me.
