On the website https://liftthesky.com/home the project information begins with this paragraph: “Lift the Sky is a project designed to create community, and inspire thought and action. Artworks created as messages for the world powered by the desire to offer visions of hope about what the world can be. Artists and others are creating their messages as artwork which are then attached to one another to create long panels which hang from above (sky). These panels will be seen as installations in public spaces, museums, galleries and anywhere imaginable” In one of the many newsletters I receive regularly, this project caught my attention as being something positive in the world that is so dark in many places today. A vertical panel of calico/muslin, 18″ x 24″ could be decorated using any any materials in any techniques to present participating artist’s messages to the world.

I have a bunch of positive mantras that I often think about and quote – such as “People who never achieve anything never make a mess” or “Waste not, want not”, “Make do and mend”, and I chose this last one because somehow it fits with much of the community attitude here in Uruguay that seems stronger than where I’ve lived in USA and many parts of Australia…. and also harks back to how my parents’ generation lived through and served in World War II, and their parents coped with life during Great Depression. Mum referred to my generation, the baby boomers, as the “throw away generation”, but she’s been gone for nearly 40 years now, so she hadn’t seen anything compared to the way society discards stuff these days, whether broken or worn out, or not. Mike and I once went to a fabulous exhibition of mended objects in Paris about which I blogged at the time (October 2007) which had the central theme that people around the world repair things because they have great value in our daily lives. We all know examples, though, of things that are frequently discarded not because they’re worn out, but often because there’s a new model, or something has gone out of fashion – phones and clothing especially stand out. Another side of the world’s waste problem is that getting something repaired is often either impossible because of compartmentalised components for example, or because to fix something is often more expensive than just going out and buying a new whatever. Recently I had to buy a new printer because the one I had could not be repaired. The new one was only US$90.00 (and in this country imported goods are expensive) If the repair guy had been able to repair it, time and parts would probably have cost that at least, anyway. This goes totally against the grain of how I was brought up. Anyway, all of that is the back story to why I chose “Make do & mend” as my message.

My regular readers will know that my previous post was about the pieced fabric scraps that I was already assembling for a new project. When I wrote that, I hadn’t formed the idea that I’d use some of those strips for this project, and indeed, hadn’t even decided anything beyond expressing interest. A few days ago I decided to cut and use a few strip groups to form the words of my message; so I pencilled out the large words on the fabric then fused groups of strips onto them following the pencil lines. I hand stitched over the edges using the technique of raw edge applique I’m currently drawn to; added a few scattered patches and the border strips; signed my name and now I’m organising someone to take it up to the USA to post it up there to get to California by January 5th. As I already had plenty of strip groups, I estimate it’s taken a total of about 15 hours to put together, including about an hour to unpick and re-do about half of my machine embroidered surname 🙂 Unpicking free machine embroidery is hell, tedious even. But once you know it really is necessary, it requires careful, steady patience.

I’ve always been a mender, and every now and then, when a garment is completely past any further mending I tear it up to add it to the supply of household cleaning cloths. Our leather shoes were mended and if we outgrew them before they totally wore out, they were handed down. There is dignity, I think in mending clothing – the idea being do it as well as possible of course, but then to wear the well-mended garment with pride. These days there’s a fashion genre known as ‘shabby chic’ and adherents of that ‘style’ wear and use visibly mended and or about-to-be-mended things. With the pandemic came huge uncertainty about when we might ever go into a clothes shop again, and I boldly patched a favourite, very moth-holed, wool jumper with printed fabrics and contrasting thread; and interestingly recently met another fibre artist here who did the same thing with his wool cardigan, although his patches were embroidered with filling stitches in very noticeable colours.