Cloth Stories
Capturing domestic life in textile art
Ali Ferguson
The feel of a stitch, the reminiscing of by-gone days…..a child’s view of the household -a memory, experience. We do not need to look far to find security, it can come right from within the place we spend most of our time - home. As humans we seem to be obsessed with harking backwards…things were better when….I wish it could be like that…again. So why not let this infiltrate into our artwork too? Think of comfort - what comes to mind? Is it the feel of a quilt, cosseting our mini-me selves? Or is it that day at the seaside, when mum grabbed us and drowned us in a towel, post-swim? Think again to the days out an grandmothers house, when we were told not to sit on the arm of a chair….do you remember what was on that location? In my life, it was an odd looking contraption - a very special looking cloth which was said to ‘protect’ the fabric of the chair itself (personally I always thought the chair “protector” a much nicer item than the old sick like settee it was said to flounce upon and guard). What am I getting at here? Cloth and memory…they are a marriage made….we think of one, and then the other, or both at the same time.
No matter where we live or who we live with, we will find some sort of cloth. A blanked, a quilt, your grannies napkin set…we are not all too modern and moved on as it were, to forget the “what was”. This book explores the local lives we live, the everyday and what can inspire us from within.
There are lovely illustrations throughout, use of unusual materials (check out the paint chart embroidery on page 11 for a little idea to take on board) and many, many ways of using all the things we treasure…again. The postcards we “could” embroider on, instead of simply keeping in a keepsake drawer…the letters from a loved one….I could go on.
Ferguson encourages us to develop our own textile stories, new ones, from all the familial and domesticated ones we have already. There is enough of the past, so well described by her way of writing the text, to really enthuse us for the future. Many of us have turned to reusing and recycling and the ‘slow stitch’ tribe. This book fits in like the vintage glove we could have found illustrated in this book (there may even be one, I have yet to notice!)
Other artists have also been highlighted; namely Mandy Pattullo, Caren Garfen…and more.