After a couple harried weeks I am now back to working on the collaboration, with the goal of 25 large pieces in three years. We are now coming upon the 11th month of the first year and I am on piece #4! Yikes, I could just freak out over that but I am having too much fun coming up with designs, techniques, themes and materials to include. And my plan of plotting the subsequent while designing the current seems to be working equally as well.
In preparation for #4, I watched a You Tube video about laminating paper to cloth. I experimented with two types of aged (and irreplaceable) paper. One was newspaper clippings saved by my grandmother from the 1920’s-40’s. The other was 1940’s era typing paper of homework from my father’s studies at Stanford. I laminated both to silk organza. Interestingly enough the newsprint did not dissolve in water whereas the typing paper did, leaving the typed text laminated to the cloth. The clipping itself laminated but no ink stuck to the cloth so I am using it as is, glued to the fabric. The news is still legible.
The article is about my grandfather who became both a father for the 3rd time and grandfather for the 1st time four days apart. Yes, my aunt and I are just four days apart and there were always lots of questions by strangers if we were twins. So I have included photos of my ‘twin’ in this piece as well.
I am hoping to fuse the images this weekend and start stitching soon. Stay tuned…