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Great Aunt Ada's Cloth

13/6/2018

I've started by painting in the selected colours.
First I only glue down the solid part which has no openwork, so that I can paint the underlying colour which will show though the crochet work.
To paint the crochet areas I simply slide a piece of paper underneath to cover the background colour before applying a contrast colour to the crochet. Then glue the rest of the cloth down.

I don't obliterate these sections. First of all it would be to dismiss the skills of whoever made it, and secondly they are symbolic of the divisions in society where a thirteen year old girls may well have worked the powerloom that wove the cloth, which was made into a finished tablecloth by a woman with time to sit and sew for pleasure.

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more new work

3/6/2018

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It's always good to have more than one piece to work on. Sometimes it's necessary to step back from a painting as a way of being able to detach from the intensity of painting. Then it becomes clear what needs to be done next.

I had a small table cover. for a tea table perhaps, that was made by my great aunt Ada Louise Flint. Over the years the cotton fabric has become very thin and fragile to the point that it could no longer be repaired.
It will survive now as part of my current series of paintings - not as a whole but torn into four quarters to be hung together.

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