Whatever Floats...at the National Needlework Archive

Yesterday Jane, Mavis and I hung the work from the Whatever Floats Your Boat exhibition. This is the work done by members of the Thames Valley Contemporary Textile group inspired by the artefacts in the Slough Museum and by Slough itself. You may recall hearing about the exhibition when it was originally at Slough and then in Bracknell last Winter.

Now it is at the National Needlework Archive. The exhibition will be open from today - 19 Sept. - to the 26th October. If you are interested, there are also 2 workshops connected with the exhibition. Information can be found on the workshop page of the NNA website. Scroll down to Saturday 6th October and Friday 26th October.

There is opportunity to see "The Country Wife". (For a small fee). A textile mural designed by Constance Howard and made by her and some of her students at Goldsmiths College for the Country Pavilion at the Festival of Britain in 1951. The work is being meticulously restored by Volunteers at the NNA.

The National Needlework Archive has large room with walls that can be repositioned for gallery space. Here are a few photos of how the work has been arranged. We hadn't so many plinths this time, but made good use of the glass cabinets.

The spot lighting makes elements of the work stand out in ways that wasn't noticable in the other venues. You can see more of the texture and embellishment on the various pieces.

The Venue isn't the easiest to get to, but worth it. They even have a tea room! Check out the website to see if it is open before you go. The Building is called the Old Textile Chapel...it used to be the chapel for the Greenham Common Base.

Doll Corset

Now that the journals for 2010 are done, I want to get some headway with the piece for the Slough Museum project.

I thought I had shown the pieces from the museum that inspired me, but I can't seem to find the post to link to. So, here they are. 2 wee doll corsets.

You can see them in context as they are part of one of the boxes from the handling collection.

I had already stitched up a sample of thread possiblilites and labeled it. While I was away, I tried doing a bit more stitching, but not really knowing where I was going, it didn't come to much.

One of the ideas I came away with after discussion at the last TVCQ meeting was about presentation. I didn't really want to do flat like a quilt, but I want to do Big. (Mind you, 'Big' in my perspective is probably not so big when it comes to the quilts some people make!) Someone suggested something which in my mind was translated to a sort of basket shape with the "corset" covering it.

As I have been thinking further,I like the scrips and scraps effect of the sample I made. Perhaps why the second piece I started didn't motivate me.

So, I came up with the idea of a Large corset with the stitched scrips and scraps adhered to it.

SO, in order to do that, I need the large corset shape. Yesterday I downloaded instructions from Drea Leeds site which has a Custom Corset generator. It is for a Tudor corset, but I have the photos of the dolls corsets to go by for shaping and for the boning areas. These doll corsets were not built with the hourglass shape, so the Tudor corset is a good start.
To use the custom corset generator, you have to type in measurements. I looked in my pattern drafting book (Winifred Aldrich - Metric Pattern Cutting) and used the largest size on the standard measurement chart. The corset generator uses inches, so I used my measureing tape to translate from metric to inches and filled in the form on the website which then was printed out to get the instructions for drafting it.

Tonight - having been in a VERY long meeting at college, I stopped and got some more white muslin to use for the scrips and scraps. After dinner, I drafted the corset. I drew in "boning lines"...adding to what was on the dolls corset, as they needed less being small and also because they were only for shaping a cloth doll body. The placement and shape of the curve may change, but it gives me an idea.

So, now I have the pattern. It needs to be cut on the fold at the centre front. I had thought to use organza for a bit of fragility, but the scrips and scraps will serve to give that idea. I think I will use calico because it will need that extra support.
I hope to use thick cording for the boning, but in reference to the reeds in one of the corsets, will use sticks for some parts which will then be used stuck into a base to mount the piece.

or at least those are the ideas at this stage