Sunday 22 August 2021

Family history in paint and stitch

This is a bit of a story… During the pandemic, I took to walking through the village my parents grew up in. I wanted to look for my roots a bit. My mother’s parents started a garage after WW2. That garage is long gone but I remember many Sundays playing there as a child. Walking through that street I discovered to my delight that, because the neighbouring building was demolished and there is now a footpath, the side wall of the original workshop still exists. I was so happy to be able to see and photograph the brick walls my grandparents built there.

A workshop by Haf Weighton was the ideal occasion to do something with this experience. So with paint and stitching I pictured the wall in the present, adding some elements from the past through old photographs (I printed the images onto fabric). With stitching I tried to bring these elements together into a whole, using the texture of the fabric as a reference when choosing stitches. I did not use many colours, because I wanted to retain the atmosphere of old black and white photos. Oh and the young lady on the scooter is my mum!





This is the brick wall:







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