If you thought me digging out a sewing project I started in the NINETIES was o.l.d., boy have I got a doozy for you.
As an apprentice sewantista, I also dug out a project my mother always wanted to do. So this project was from the 80s. And if you weren’t alive in the 90s, not only did you miss a lot of good music but you weren’t even being t.h.o.u.g.h.t. about in the 80s…#justsaying (your parents were probably partying it up big time in the 80s #nothelping #stilljustsaying).
I hope it’s everything you wanted for it…
This project has serious sentimental attachment for a number of reasons: my mum died in 94, so she never got time to start or finish this project and it was something she wanted to do; my family has kept this in spite of everything: it’s one of the few things of my mum’s that my Dad didn’t donate to charity within a couple of weeks of her passing (yeah that #stillhurts); to me it represents a life not fulfilled: there were so many things she wanted to do, could have done, but never got the chance or the time or the space to…so I owe it to honour her; and – for a number of reasons – what she wanted to do was on the back burner for my sister and me, and our education and our future, so I OWE her one in ways you cannot even imagine. And I will never be able to repay that debt. Ever.
This project also has sentimental attachment for other reasons: there’s a story about this, which I will get to in the next paragraph. But here’s what we are dealing with:
The project
What you see in the photo above ^, is a series of strips. Each strip is hand painted silk, and together they form a whole piece. What they were was hand-painted silk wallpaper. My Uncle Roger (my mum’s brother, life partner of Uncle John of the onion pudding) worked in interior design in his mis-spent-but-excitingly-spent youth, and this is a souvenir from that time. One of the jobs he had to do, back in the day (I am assuming late 70s, maybe early 80s) was take down this glorious hand-painted silk wallpaper to replace it with something new.
Clearly that was hard to do, and he knew my mum would love it, so he lovingly razored it off the wall and saved it in strips. He either sent it to her, or bought it to her when he visited from the UK (where else in the 70-80 are you going to find people who not only have hand-painted silk wallpaper, but want to replace it with something else?), and it sat on a roll in her wardrobe ever since. It sat there waiting for the day she had time, a sewing machine and supplies to be able to turn it into a wall hanging. Because it is beautiful. And it is also – sorry to be a downer again – but a tragedy she never got the chance to start or finish this vision, and so many other things.
I took the silk when I moved out. So learning how to machine sew was the prompt that I could begin this project, because it needs to be done. Because I need to do it.
It’s quite daunting: so fragile and with so much personal meaning to it. I’d already pieced it out and worked out the sequence, years ago. Once I had bought a complimentary silk thread, I stared the journey:
In the midst of sewing…
The panels together:
I hope it’s everything you wanted for it…
The journey is not complete: I still need to decide on how I am going to back it, and how it will be hung: there is a wall for it in my father’s house. But it’s nice to know it’s come so far:
#endgame
It will also be nice when it’s done. I have carried this with me for a while and I would like to complete it, and mark it as done. It doesn’t pay my debts, by any means, but it does honour something I need to honour and to mark.
[…] Finish off the silk panel project […]