caro-rose-creations

Oral History

I went to the State Library  this weekend past to take a course in recording "Oral History".  The older members of the Embroiderer's Guild are not getting any younger and it is important to document their stories and their journeys as embroiderers.  It is a rather daunting task now that I know just how much work is involved.  Yet, it may make a good topic for my Doctorate.  If I am going to put in a number of years and a lot of personal time I think linking it to extra qualifications would be an incentive for me.

There were participants from many parts of the State and I must say that the library is very impressive.

Investigating African Themes

I have a friendship block to do for a friend in my Quilting group.  She has already sewn the blocks for us, (so that they will all be exactly the same?) and we are to hand embroider an African  themed design.  So off to the Internet world .

Once you start looking, out in that world that isn't real but is, oh the things you find.  I came upon The Fibrearts Studio and the most wonderful gallery of inspiring work.  This one is going to keep me looking for days.  I also quickly found the design for my block.  I am going to base it on a mask that comes from the Congo.

I am trying to find all the old photographs of my past work.  I do keep a register, going back to the 1970's and even a couple of pieces I did as a kid in the 60's.  I will have to scan them all in and make a digital record.  There are some major pieces that I have no record of at all.  I sold them back in the 70's and I suppose I will never find them again.  I won't make that mistake again.

I made these table mats for my daughter.  The designs are Ukranian and I found them in Gay Eaton's wonderful book "Ukrainian Embroidery" . 

I have stitched nearly everyone of the pieces from this book.  At the time I was having a very challenging time at work and because you have to concentrate totally on the pattern I was able to block out the "work related thoughts".

The weeks end

Time is sliding away.  It does that sometimes when life seems to be throwing up all kinds of challenges.
I will be spending my Saturday at the State Library learning how to collect oral history.  I want to collect the history of older women who have spent there lives stitching.  How stitching is intertwined with their lives. 

Many years ago Miss Roma Field came into my life.  I was living in a remote community and this elderly lady, she was  in her late 70's at this time, came to our little town with an exhibition from the NSW Embroiderers Guild.  She inspired me.  I was involved in creative stitchery at the time but she introduced me to traditional embroidery and it's beauty. I found a reference to her in the database of the Powerhouse Museum and some terrible photographs of some of her work.  I hope they get around to doing her full story.

Going through my old photos I found an image of an embroidery from South Africa that I had wanted to buy but it had already been sold.  I had found this work in New Zealand.  African embroidery is naive yet so powerful.

Taking stock

I had to make a decision the other night whether to go to my Spanish class or spend the night preparing lessons for my challenging year 11 students.  I decided on the lesson preparation and the next day my change of approach changed the dynamics of the class.

Returning to work has been far more challenging than I thought it would be.  I am not the same person I was before I was attacked.  Naively, I thought that after I recovered from the Post Traumatic Stress everything would be the same as before.  But I'm a different person.  One constant has been my love of textiles.  When I was really ill I would stitch to concentrate my mind and not dwell on the fear.

Just as my change of approach to my class changed the dynamics of my class I think my travels last year acted the same way for my recovery.  I also found that my on-line class revealed just how intense I still am.  I think the way forward for me is through my love of textiles and design.  To this end I have been trawling through my old designs and have rediscovered all the research I did on graffiti.

I had used graffiti with my year 10 textiles students getting them to use their tags etc as part of their designs.  I have singled out some of the work as a basis for my next piece.

I think that this symbol would work well in a quilt. And the use of positive and negative space is very interesting in the following work.

The end of the on-line class

Well I have finished my 'Sumptuous Surface's embroidery course.  It wasn't the best time to start to learn something like this as I have all my lessons to prepare for school and I have begun my Spanish language course at the same time.  But sometimes it is things like this that stretch us and push us to do things that we wouldn't normally attempt.

I like traditional embroidery, Ukrainian white-work, drawn thread, needle lace are the things I like best.  Free embroidery, or wild things, as my friends call them are not normally my first choice.  But I learnt so much about the design process on how to get those thought processes started.  Also, how my mental state effects what I produce.  I am so intense.  I need to lighten up.