Hope 1993 a work in progress

Sewing was one of those things my mom and I fought about. She tried patiently to teach me while I would rush, make mistakes and get frustrated. My mom would rip the seams, hand it back to me and ask me to do it again. I hated sewing. But like most things our mom’s make us do, like eating our vegetables, I was grateful later. Who would have thought I would be putting my basic sewing skills to use to finish one of my pieces for the She’s Got Issues show.

 

I knew what I wanted the finished pieces to look like, the figure mounted on mirrored glass and surrounded by quilted fabric. The cast glass sculpture was finished, now for the fabric portion of this project. I dusted off my mom’s sewing machine and read the manual to remember how to thread the machine. Using the machine for the quilted protion wasn’t too bad since it was just straight lines. Then I had to figure out how to make room for the glass to come through the quilted fabric. I made a pattern on newsprint, pined it to the quilt and did a simple slip stich straight through the pattern and fabric.  Once sewn I cut out the inner part of the pattern and removed the remaining pieces of paper. With the fabric complete, I mounted the relief sculpture to mirrored glass, apllied the fabric over the casting and framed the entire piece so it would hang from the wall.

 

The finished piece will be one of two pieces (Hope 1993 and Hope 2010) on display as part of She’s Got Issues at HighWire Arts from June 13-20.