TV dinner, again…

36” x 42”  printed cotton fabric, embroidery thread

 

The work that I have created as the final project for this course has been slowly working within me for a while.  This class definitely refined and clarified the process and gave my work more personal value.

 I am very new to hand-sewing.  I learned how to embroider over the summer (thank you Gail!) and continued in the fall.  The imagery of the TV dinner began last summer as well. 

 Many of the fiber artists discussed in the book really resonated with me.  I really liked Nancy Crow’s quilts, on her website, that looked like finger paintings.  Tim Harding’s works, when I looked him up, looked like paintings to wear.  I loved these and really wanted to touch and hold them.  I could see the artists hand in the work.

 Through each decade of the American Craft history, technology changed how some artists made their work.  Some works changed on the surface, keeping the same basic forms but added imagery, color and/or texture.   

So I decided to try designing a fabric to embroider on.  After several failed attempts at a seamless repeating pattern, I simplified my original design, printed and ordered my fabric.  Spoonflower.com was the website I used, and it was fun!  The repetition of a printed pattern was perfect for my TV dinner design, because I ate millions of them growing up.  I am using embroidery to add additional images that are relevant to that time of my life, as well as to enhance some of the TV dinners (how can you enhance a TV dinner?). 

I feel like I am sewing a painting (I am not finished yet).  Hopefully, the finished piece will show my hands at work in all phases of the piece. 

 Most of all, at my age, I am doing something new.  I loved Claire Zeiler’s quote at 59 years old “I was slightly a late bloomer.”  This probably influenced me the most.  I am not too old to do new and different things.  This is so freeing.  I am excited about the possibilities of printing my own fabrics, maybe painting on them, using them with my sculptures, who knows!