Last week I went to see Cloth and Memory 2 at Salt's Mill with my namesake and kindred spirit, Claire. The exhibition is on a truly monumental scale and is staged in the old spinning shed at the mill. The work was all meritorious but the pieces that were most eloquent were the ones that had been created in direct response to the Mill itself.
It got me thinking about how I could develop one of my recent themes, the work of women social reformers from the Victorian era. I've already made two pieces inspired by lace from the Gawthorpe Hall collection and I've got an idea for at least one item if not more. I want to continue to work with fine and translucent fabrics and inspiration came in the early hours of the morning - somewhere between waking and sleeping. later that morning I started sampling with some cotton organdie sandwiched between two layers of fine net. I stitched the fabrics together using silk yarn and a mixture of random patterns, text and drawing with thread. Then I applied devore paste (rather too clumsily, I confess) and burnt out the cotton. The resultant fabric was crude but had potential. Using screens to print the devore paste will ensure a lighter touch and clear images. The stitching needs to be denser to capture the fragments of cotton organdie.
Here are the seeds for a new projects.
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