This project was my response to a workshop set by Jennifer Collier, who is known for stitching lifelike objects out of vintage paper. She provided us with a template and invited us to create a vintage style or pair of ladies buttoned gloves. Her demonstration ones were beautiful, using pages from A Diary of a Country Lady, which she buys up from charity shops - see below. I remember that this book and the spin-off merchandise were popular gifts for your Mum or Granny when I was growing up!
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| Paper gloves by Jennifer Collier |
This project seemed easy enough - choose some interesting paper, stitch round a front and back with running stitch before cutting out. Then add thumb and button fastening detail. There was the option to iron some wax onto the thumb piece to make it more translucent if necessary.
I then had to decide how to mount the shape. I tried the piece out on both white and blue backgrounds. The strong blue of the second image reminded me of 'PPE blue' that seemed to be everywhere on the news during the pandemic and seemed to set off the images nicely.
To neaten the edges of the glove I went all around with a black felt tip.
However, it just wasn't grabbing me - I couldn't think of a story to tell with the gloves, which seemed key to me. So I started doing some research online and found the following image - a string and nail artwork - which I found very striking. It make me think of a parent holding a child's hand or caring hands, although a friend said she thought it looked like a child had been snatched away in a sinister way!
I therefore decided to go with it and use a nursing theme. I found some current and archive images of nurses online and printed them out on white and blue paper. I haven't printed on coloured paper before but I thought it might help to unify the colours better. I also found a great image of union jacks and banners thanking the NHS during the pandemic from Oxford Street in London I think. I thought that the splashes of colour from the flags would also be a great addition to the piece.
One of the archive nursing images I was attracted to included 2 women of colour. It highlights the vital role that migrant workers have played and continue to play in staffing the NHS. One such nurse was my Aunt who came to the UK from Malawi to train as a nurse then a midwife, so this started to make the piece more personal, although I don't have a photo of her in her nurses uniform.
One good tip Jennifer gave was to trace your template onto a piece of acetate so that you can easily select the placement of images on your paper. I made a collage of the images I had found and played around with them so that the most important bits of the pictures and words were in view before cutting them out. It was quite a complicated set of pieces to fit together and cutting out the internal curves of the small hand was very tricky to do accurately. I stuck the pieces down with glue stick on a piece of card cut to the same template.
Before fixing this down I wanted to add some stitching - this was a stich challenge after all! I got the idea of researching the types of stitches used for medical purposes:
Many of them seemed very similar to conventional embroidery stitches but of course they are all sewn and finished off from the front. I used a needle to pierce holes around each of the images in my piece and used all of the different types of suture, which was fun! I even included some staples.
Finally to add a contemporary touch and give a nod to the rainbow symbolism that has become synonymous with the NHS during the pandemic, I created a rainbow friendship bracelet to go on the 'child's' wrist. To do this I chose the 7 colours of the rainbow in single strands of embroidery floss and made a kumihimo braid - see my earlier blog post. I cut a tag out of embossing foil, pierced 2 holes in it with a large needle and stuck on an NHS logo. Then I threaded the tag onto the friendship string and fixed it across the gap, securing it with sticky tape.
I mounted the whole piece onto the background card with sponge sticky spacers used in card making, to give the whole piece a 3D element. Nothing like the original vintage glove project, but fun to research and make.
