I’m really interested in Japanese Boro texiles since my mum introduced me to them. I think they are beautiful to look at. Very simple and effective. (You may notice my flickr name, and constant touchstone – lessismore).
I think they have the same kind of appeal as things made by the Amish. Simple. No overt embellishment. Made for purpose. I like the idea that nothing is wasted, using up all your scraps for something productive and beautiful. Of course, trying it out for myself it soon became apparent that it’s not so easy to be this effortless.
So, I took my pile of scraps:
I wanted to use some natural colours, but this strand of red got in there somehow and got me thinking about using some red too but more about that below. I wanted to work freely without thinking about it too much and let the design emerge from the fabric. I didn’t plan anything, but just started to build up the design in a way that felt pleasing.
I think it would have been more traditional to hand stitch the pieces together but I was impatient to see some results. And so the piece grew…
and grew…
until I started thinking about that red, and about what tiny embellishments I could add to the simplicity of the patchwork taking shape.
This is possibly where i started to go wrong. I started to be too conscious of what I was doing and where I was placing the pieces.
But I loved the frayed edge of this red fabric scrap that I had in my pile, and wanted to find a way to incorporate it.
Which meant changing my technique but this time I think the variation was more successful. I like the fact that you can see the stitching:
and then I ran out of scraps. So this is where I’m at:
not exactly what I was hoping for, and probably nothing to do with Boro, but lots learnt and some pleasing results. Now I just want to make more things so that I can have lots of scraps left over for more experiments.
