'Mapping the Future Where are you now'

Private View invite for this exhibition. Please come along and spread the word! I am so please they have used an image of my textile!!!!

More Maps

on friday when i was meant to be tackling chapter 2, making lace, i was finalising the way my piece for the Brewhouse would hang. the only great height we have at home is the stairwell so in true Heath Robinson style i have walked up and down the stairs many times and attached a pole to the bannisters! the piece is one long strip looped up so there are essentially 3 lengths hanging side by side.
detail above showing bus stop photograph
playing around with the pieces that will sit on the floor
such wonderful sounding occupations but in reality..........?!

Mapping the Future

in March last year I attended the Textile Forum South West conference 'Mapping the Future: Where are you now?' Out of this conference an exhibition is due to be held at The Brewhouse in taunton 23 february - 24 March.
i have been working on my piece for a while and these are some of the thoughts behind it. to get to Taunton I usually travel by bus from Exeter going through many villages and towns my ancestors lived in.
i have used this directly to make a modern 'strip map' using the bus ticket shape and incorporating all the textile related occupations of my family.
Each person has a ticket, some have more than one as they changed occupation. they are all colour coded to the type of occupation but all linked with one consistent thread (except for those with multiples)
they each have a momento ticket made from either map, timetable, notes, photographs of the areas or copies of census returns all sprayed black and waxed. i am at the stage of putting the final pieces together. more progress later.

Module 5, Chapter 1 Lace

for this chapter i chose, after a long deliberation, to study Venetian Raised needlelace. i am very lucky that i have easy access to many books on lace and a wonderful lace collection(RAMM)to study. that probably made it more difficult to choose but i got there eventually.Italian Gros Point has often intrigued me because it looked quite ugly and inconceivable as to how it was made! although there are many books on lace that cover the subject historically, i found it difficult to find detailed working diagrams or instructions.
i did find one book very helpful, Venetian Gros Point Lace by Nenia Lovesey and Catherine Barley. so i made a sample seen below. i used quite a thick thread to that which would have been used originally so it turned out a bit rustic! however i am quite pleased with it for a first attempt.

it's quite appropriate studying this type of lace in the winter because of the resemblence to snowflakes!
i have concentrated mainly on male attire for this study. i love the collars and their attached tassles
i found really detailed instructions on how to document this type of lace here. there are some great photographs of the main features found on all the Venetian raised laces.

Wishing everyone a Happy and productive 2012!