Follow the thread (Part 2)…
THE cushion cover…
Last post I wrote about the impact that drawing has had on the evolution of my embroidery works.
In part 2 I can reveal one of the other catalysts for the threads…a cushion cover.
Yup. You heard me.
This cushion cover is an amazing thing. It was originally a hand-knitted jumper (the youth of today would KILL for a jumper like this…) made by my mother-in-law (hi Annie!) and then turned into a cushion cover at some stage.
We ended up with this cushion in our house, on our couch.
Archer has loved this cushion, perhaps a little too fervently (that sounds a bit rude, but his love has been pure, I assure you…)
As a result of his constant snuggling, romping and sometimes-wrestling, the cushion began to show some serious signs of wear. He WORE HOLES in the cover with the intensity of his affections.
I loved this cushion too (perhaps not quite as much as Archer, but loved it still), so I figured I would attempt to repair it, using some embroidery threads I had lying around (SEE: it is a good thing I keep all those old materials…)
I borrowed a little darning mushroom from our textiles department at work and made a reasonable job of it. The cushion cover was restored, to live another snuggle with Archer.
But what I found was: the process of darning, the HANDLING of the threads and the cover as materials, and the beautiful tactile, textural quality that even my extremely rudimentary darning skills produced - all this was intoxicating to me.
I thought to myself - I want more of this…
Following on from this cushiony adventure, I tried to replicate the technique of darning in some trial embroidery works, but it never quite came together. (However, there is still something there that specifically relates to darning and mending as a process that I think will come out again somewhere in my work...)
One of the central ideas I explore in my work is around fragmentation and wholeness, so diving further into these techniques of mending, using them more deliberately in the work (if I can find a way to make them work…) seems fitting.
The darning produces something quite different to the quality of my current embroideries. To darn something, you are literally creating a miniature new weave over the break in the fabric, setting up your warp threads across the rupture and weaving in your wefts. It can be done beautifully so that the repair itself becomes a new feature of the object (just search ‘visible mending’, ‘sashisko’ or ‘boro’ for some gorgeous examples of Japanese mending techniques)
My attempts were not quite that refined and had a bit of an idiosyncratic, joyful lumpiness…that I nevertheless found pretty compelling. The embroidery stitching I’m using now feels like a whole skin, a beautiful tactile surface…whereas with the darning there is certain separation of the repair from the original, (especially in my attempts….) and held within the implications of having to repair, is the knowledge that the break is still there, even though the breach has been spanned.
Lots of metaphors to play with, but in the end, the work itself has to also hold together as something that works. An apt metaphor is not enough. We will see.
Note: my initial repair job was done a while ago…the cushion is actually now BACK on the operating/darning table for further work…like the Ship of Theseus: one day it will be ALL MINE (mwah, ha ha)…
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