Initial Summer Holiday Ideas

Hi Blogspot ...

So, we have been given the task of finding ideas that we can work with and develop into a final exhibition piece at the end of the year.

Now, I did actually start doing this over the summer holidays and I came up with a couple of reasonable ideas.

The first one was to continue with my 'Boundaries Bag' and continue that further by creating a whole collection of bags which had personal themes.

For instance, I was thinking about doing a bag made out of razor blades. The story of my life behind razor blades is on the day my husband and I got married, about 30 women from my husband's family (he's Indonesian and we got married over there) man-handled me into a room and stripped me. They then divided themselves into groups - one group dressed me, one group did my hair and one my make-up. It sounds horrific but it was actually almost cartoonish and very amusing ... it was a very small room, it was very nosiey because they were all talking at once and I was the only white woman there who towered above the little Indonesian ladies. All was quite amusing until the lady with the razor blade came forward from the make-up group. My Indonesian is very basic so I couldn't understand a word they were saying. I saw the blade and wondered what they were going to do with it - was it some kind of Indonesian slashing of the white woman ritual before the ceremony? Turned out she wanted to shave my face. They sat me down - all 30 woman stopped and crowded around me and watched as the woman with the razor commenced dry-shaving my face. With every sweep of the razor a little cry of wonder went up as the held up the large amount of white fluff that she had removed from my face ... I was letting out a cry of horror as I saw the amount of 'beard' that I had ... dreadful! ... Anyway, that's the story behind the razor blade bag.

Another bag I thought I could make was of buttons because when I was a kid my mum's sewing room doubled up as my bedroom and whenever she worked in there, I would get out her button box and rummage through all the wonderous buttons she had and sorted them into size or colour, textured or furry ... I spent hours doing that and I still have her button box now ... and I still get the same 'oooo' whenever I open it!

So anyway, that's the kind of idea I had for bags - a whole array of them (because I've got a year to do it in) and all made up of different things that have had an influence on my life. It's quite a nice idea but is it enough ... or is it good enough? I'm not sure ... I'm still considering it.

The other idea I had was to do something in textiles of my family tree. I have relatives on both sides of my family who are currently working on our family tree ... which turns out to be quite an interesting family. We're certainly not linked with royalty, sadly, but we do have some colourful characters!

For instance, my great, great, great-grandfather John Price had an extra finger on each hand - 5 fingers and a thumb! I think he was a shepherd - most of the men folk in our family way back when were shepherds or farm hands! Another great, great, great-grandfather I had was a taxidermist and apparently the whole house was filled with stuffed dead animals of various shapes and sizes ... we still have one last piece of his at my grandma's house - a red squirrel with a nut in its mouth mounted on a log in a glass box hung on the wall. I also had an auntie was very 'popular' (if you catch my drift) at the local GI base in WWII. At some point she got 'sent away' for a period of time but came back nice and slender and carried on as before!!!!!

And these are by no means the only 'interesting' characters we have in our family ... the list goes on!!!

What I was thinking of maybe doing, if I can bring myself to do it ... was to great a large (takes a deep breath before she says it) ... wall hanging (urgh, I hate that term!) and recreate my family tree in say, patchwork with each square being a member of my family - a picture of them if we have one - printed onto fabric and perhaps an interesting fact or story about that person which I can recreate in thread or mixed media of some kind.

However, I'm now starting to wonder if this idea is interesting enough ... hmm ... I'm not sure.

Anyway these are my summer holiday ideas.

There'll be more blogs with more ideas as they come!!!

:o)