memory cloth panel one

Snatched moments on the memory cloth partly in a response to Jude Hill's What If Diaries, and partly in response to the need to record memories held in cloth and to pass on.  Partly to record a feeling of life running through me like a river

Detail of Alice Gertrude's dress 

Detail of river flowing

the river flowing

first panel is felted fragments on silk chiffon with blue face leicester wool

have just finished felting the third panel, and waiting for it to dry.  Then will be the bringing together of three panels into a 'protector' cloth, or comforter or  perhaps a witche's cloak that can magic you away to another world.

Remembering

sample silk nuno

the idea has been fizzing around on and off for a number of years, and with the focus of an exhibition coming in September, it's sample making time...

Another prompt was this -

mouse nest of wool and silk

The mouse invasion meant I needed to completely clean and sort a stash of cloths crossing generations from Great Great Grandmothers to babies - a collective female history (herstory perhaps)

cleaned and dried awaiting repurposing, remembering

This is Great Great Grandmother Alice Gertrude's wedding dress, thick silk satin, see how rotten it is -

Alice married in 1891

Would this fragile cloth felt in or completely disintergrate?  The woman died of pleurisy when only 37 years old, leaving two children.  The age before antibiotics ... the only remedy was to use a mustard compress to draw off the liquid. 

invisible baste on Alice's silk

stitching right side

To secure the scraps I used a variation of Jude's invisible baste to hold them long enough for the wool to do its magic in the felting.

Freda's wedding veil

another treasure is Great Granny's wedding veil, married in 1932.  Also to be included would be some of the velvet from the sleeves - she had a winter wedding and then removed the top to make a velvet skirt died black during the war.

unfelted

and then this became this ...

felted

and this

closeup of Alice's silk

This ...

woven scraps

became this ...

felted woven nuno sample

I've been using fleece from local sheep - teased cleaned and carded so blending dark chocolate brown with creamy white.  So soft.  A little book would be good to make too to record these folk - to accompany the mantle that emerges.