sanjagirl and the shoes

I am still working on my entry for the SAQA "homelessness" juried exhibit. I have settled on which photographs-printed-on-cloth I will use (previous posts), and have chosen my colorway -- dirt brown -- and dyed the fabric after making some dark marks on it via flour paste resist.

Now I am pondering other surface design techniques, and my overall composition. In the over-the-moon-spectacular-you-must-have-this book Stitch Magic by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn, the authors feature many examples of how stitches can enhance textiles. One which sang to me (page 33) had small strips of frayed denim stitched down with an irregular stitch of a very lightweight thread.

That felt like such an anomaly -- the strongest material -- jeans cloth -- and the weakest thread. That concept seemed fitting for the project. I decided to get some jeans, rip them in strips,  dye them the brown of my background fabric, and handsew those strips, with a lightweight thread, around my photographs of the homeless man, as a sort of picture "frame."

So off I went to the Salvation Army and purchased some jeans.  I washed them, then cut long strips and washed them again, to get them to fray.

 

So, why the photo of Sanja and those shoes? Well, I also thought that I might put some actual footprints on the homelessness quilt -- either put textile paint on the treads, or mix dirt and paint. So I chose the Salvation Army's best looking treads for this.  Who knows whether this will work? I'll try it out, anyway.

Of course, introducing this new smell of someone else's shoes had Sanjagirl come a'runnin' -- I had to capture that moment! It was fleeting, thus the out-of-focus shot!