Beyond the boundary

Flight, a word or term that has many possibilities, not an easy direction to choose, so I was wandering around in circles for a while… which way to go? And then I unpacked one of my ecoprint bundles, and the answer was there. We have a big bush in the garden which I do not know by name and this was the first time I had used the leaf of it. I combined it with onion skins and didn’t know what to expect. At first I thought it was disappointing, only one leaf showed up, and the onion skins of course. During the cooking process the piece of silk was folded in two and I boiled it in a  blue-woad bath which gives a purple color to the silk. On the fold of the fabric, little bits of purple were shown, that remind me of barbed wire, but with openings in it.

The whole setting looks like the leaf has escaped the chaos below. This could be a thought, an idea, a refugee or just a leaf, passing the boundary, a philosophical way to explain the theme. Just one piece of silk, and the whole scene on it, the only thing I had to do was stitch it. Two blue pieces of silk are added with raw edge applique with a woolen thread. And I did, hand-stitched for six days to complete it, it was too hot for being in the sewing room with my sewing machine.

Materials: silk – copper thread and metallic gold thread – cotton, silk and woolen threads – 80/20 batting – cotton on the backside

Techniques: ecoprint and hand sewing

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