Ursa Minor For Design Consultant "D"

This first post offers a simple design based on the memory of design consultant "D". It uses two stitch techniques: straight stitch and french knot, both of which are found in some of the earliest samplers.

Completed design:

For details see HERE

Outline of design for use:

Possible uses, variations and appropriations:

The individual stars designs can be used in various sizes and colors to embellish non-celestial designs.

Visual and Aural inspiration

The mythologized memory:

The myth of the constellation:

Sounds of stars reminiscent of the repetitive sounds of a sewing machine

Note: nightsky images are rare in historic embroidery. In fact, I could find no images of them. So, inspired by seeing these morning pictures at RISD, I drew on the basic straight stitch techniques seen in the leaves of the trees for my simple design.

Designing Oneself

For this first design post, I begin at the beginning of samplers, at least the first recorded beginning. The first material artifacts can be dated to 16th Century Europe. These samplers were typically long and narrow and involved many types of stitches, rather unlike the square cross-stitch works we most commonly associate with the word. Early samplers served like pattern-books before such print materials were widely accessible. For stitchers of every age, these fabric swatches helped them to remember their preferred patterns and techniques. In effect, they were a means of designing ones’ own aesthetic. Through refining and perfecting embroidery designs through practice, and preserving them in material form, these samplers are textural textile records of individual articulations of subjectivity. Important to note is that these articulations were then sewn and seen on garments and home textiles. Thus, the interior domestic work of the sampler becomes externalized and made into part of a social discourse. Of course, in the translation from sampler to garment, the patterns changed. Stitchers re-appropriated them to fit changing aesthetics, materials, and functions. With each embroidery, stitchers (re)made themselves.

This brief theoretical pondering begs the question, what does that have to do with sewing now? What does that mean in terms of this project? In order to address those questions, I will share a reflection on the creation of this design.

When I began communicating with “D” about what memory she wanted to mark with a stitch in time, I was astounded by how clear her memory of nearly 7 years ago remained. The sensual qualities of each moment brought me into the experience of her past. Of course, those sensual qualities cannot be perfectly remembered or translated to a listener; they mutate, change, and are re-designed with each telling. Through the re-designing of her past, conscious or unconscious, each time she remembers this story “D” remakes her present. She refashions what has happened in service of contemporary relations to others and herself. In a way, this memory which she holds so dear, is re-appropriated and redesigned for new use, for the re-writing of her own autobiography.

The design I have created to mark her memory works in the same way. Though there is an 'original,' it cannot be replicated exactly. Intentionally or unintentionally, each time it is sewn, it changes and is adapted for the present.