As she aged, my great aunt wrote herself notes about all the things in her house. Making these labels for the ghost keys made me think of her labelling everything: keys, dishes, silverware, portraits, lamps and chairs – identifying the important things in her house, the house and all the things in it inherited from her parents, so her nieces and nephews could begin to understand the depth of the history that wrapped around her.  

These keys are sunprinted on a natural linen, and embroidered around the edges. Organza printed labels on the back identify what the keys might be for. Small grommets in a corner of each tag allow them to be threaded onto a string with another label. 

I put these up for sale on Etsy.

A new project: ghost keys. I made this fabric when the fabric women came to paint things on the sidewalk. I think it is my favorite of what I did that day; a simple, natural linen with black paint and key silouetttes. It is a small piece, so I was willing to cut it into even smaller pieces in pursuit of an idea. I was thinking of making these small cards into a book, explicitly binding it and adding some text.

So these are the beginnings, and their tin. Tomorrow I'll add text and figure out how to bind the pages so it will still fit into the tin. 

Partly in response to Bev's quilt of bread bag tags, I ran the stitching differently. Instead of linking them, the fabric pieces are captured between layers of tulle and stitching lines.

While working on this, I remembered why I really hate tulle; I dislike the way it dulls the fabric, and I hate stitching it. I remember why I tend to use silk organza to cover things I want to see slightly, because I like the texture and sheen of it. It is more opaque than the tulle, but nicer to work with; less stretchy and less scratchy. 

One of the commenters on Flickr wondered what would happen if I were to sandwich the unfelted, floppy cotton strips between two pieces of tulle. It occurs to me that this is an inverted quilt; generally one looks at the surface and the interior serves to bulk it out and make the quilting show. In this case, the surface is as transparent as I could find today in the fabric store, so that we can see the strips in the interior. 

I thought I was done, but I am still thinking of another way to do this. Stay tuned! 

I am really pleased with this one. It captures the way a large piece is made up of repated smaller shapes, and that they are linked together, and patterned. It is clearly made of fabric, which is my medium (as I keep saying to anyone who asks) and speaks to but does not (I hope) slavishly copy the Anatsui pieces that were so staggering when I saw them in real life. It is smaller than any of his pieces, but I am working by myself, with limited materials and space.  

I may be done with this obsession. It was fun while it lasted. I think I learned something important about the characteristics of fabric that I find so compelling. I enjoyed working to someone else's concepts, filtered, of course, through my own perception. 

I spent some quality time this evening felting some green pieces, and a red/purple piece, and then cutting them into roughly even pieces. I think I need one more color of the tall thin ones. I really like the red/purple squares – they are a great contrast against the green pieces. Maybe yellow. I can find some yellows. 

So Red Kate and I drove to Newton today to get her kayak paddle (and it is very lovely too; exquisitely light, carbon shaft and bright yellow blades), and since we were there we had two kinds of oysters, cherrystones, smoked salmon and one sublime crab cake for lunch at Legal, and then because we still had time, I took her to see the Anatsui exhibit. Which was still awesome. And showing it to someone else was interesting and made me see different things. Including one huge wall piece that was really lacey and see-through which I didn't remember. 

I realized I was trying to emulate metal that draped like fabric with …. fabric. So the efforts I was making to stiffen the fabric had to do with getting that interesting stiff pleating that Anatsui gets with linked stips of metal. My dislike of yesterday's piece had everything to do with that excess floppiness that came from it being fabric already.  So today I thought of the embellisher, and using it to make thickish felt to cut up. 

But I got distracted and ran the piece itself through the felting machine, and I kind of like this. Tomorrow, when I have no headache and lots of time, I'll felt up a swatch of fabric to cut into stiffish pieces and stitch together somehow. 

This was my first attempt to work with those elegant long rectangles that so struck me in the large wall pieces. It didn't do ANY of what I expected. It is floppy, and has large, loose holes in it, and it would take way too much thread to make it a more stable object. 

It drapes in an interesting way:

shown here across the top of the sewing machine with light behind it. But it is not at all what I was thinking of. 

The first of the Anatsui inspired pieces.

The original that inspired me was made of planks of wood cut into grids, the grid lines are black, the tops of most of the squares are the color of the natural wood, some with small glyphs on them. In several pieces, there is a ragged, burned and gouged area that runs across the grid, like a river or worn fabric. 

This is the beginning: ripped strips of old pants (thank you Al!) stitched to a thick interfacing, then cut into squares and attached to a rough black silk background. I am going to experiment with the heat gun to see if it will burn in interesting ways. I think the silk will do well, but the cotton of the pants fabric will probably burn in a bad way. Paint could also work, as could cutting with scissors or knife. Whatever I do, I won't do it inside – it'll be outside!! I promise! 

There was a special exhibit of works by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui at the Wellesley College art museum. I loved it. I came home with six new ideas to try, and I've been up in my room trying to decide where to start. I was not allowed to take pictures, so I cannot show you how they looked to me, but pictures of his works are around on the internet. Several different media were shown, including pen and ink, paintings and some wooden pieces that felt very intricate and rythmic.

My favorites were the big pieces made of bottle caps, bottle tops and the metal parts that wrap around the neck of liquor bottles.  The pieces felt like fabric, with drape and character. The little parts wired together made for acres of textured surface that the curators of the exhibit pinned into folds and waves to emphasize the fluidity of the large pieces. 

further reading

A picture here shows the fabric made from long thin parts wired together, and here that shows the different textures he gets from using different parts of the bottle closure. This is one of my favorites here; I like the way the silver goes across, and the lines that look like rivers go down, and the bulge of the red on the left interrupts the lines of silver.

There is also a nice site for the  Wellesley College museum website itself, and an  interactive site developed by a student for the exhibit.

Before I went to the museum, I visited my mum. We spent all the time talking, as well as driving about, and sitting about, and talking. I dropped a flyer off with a gallery in Ipswich that carries some fiber arts and would be a nice match.