Map to an Unknown Location from the collection of Handweavers Guild of America, Inc.

Map to an Unknown Location

paper, found metal, cotton embroidery threads, waxed linen thread, paper straws

On Loan

Artist Statement:
While dealing with a Scleroderma diagnosis, which made my old ways of making impossible, I've been hand quilting, burning, and embroidering paper I eco-dye with local leaves. The intuitive quilts are fragile skins, maps to unknown places, and the shapes of cells under the microscope. I combine these small quilts with metal objects rescued from the scrapyard, which are bent, broken, rusted, and no longer able to perform their original uses.

Technique:
I used leaves to eco-dye paper (the paper is left over from bookbinding work I can no longer do, due to my illness). I cut the paper to fit the shape of a work of metal rescued from the scrapyard. I burned the paper with a soldering iron, then hand embroidered into the paper, intuitively following the marks made by eco-dyeing. Cut paper straws were hand-stitched to the surface. The finished paper quilt was hand sewn to the found metal using waxed linen thread and a modified bookbinding stitch.

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From Handweavers Guild of America, Inc.

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