Textile work--Mixing Cloth & Paper

I was looking through photos of my work recently and saw a large number that had hand-made paper in them. Some of that paper was made by me & some was paper I bought at Paper Ya in Vancouver.

Here is the one that started it all. 

It was made for work in a textile course taken at UBC. Thank you, Kit Grauer, my teacher.

The paper piece made from abaca [banana plant] fibers which was pulped. Then I crackled dried leaves into the paper pulp.

The squares of this paper were laid shingle-fashion from the lower edge to the top.

A series in that vein followed.

First with magnolia leaves from my front yard.

The paper below had other vegetable matter in the pulp. It looks too course to me.

As I was experimenting with paper-making I took these new skills with me into the 2nd grade classroom of the time. When you make paper you have to put something between the sheets of paper you are making. That is usually cloth--'couching cloths' (pronounced cootching)! In the classroom when children are messing around with the process some of the cloths got dyed with pernicious red construction paper dye.  

So in the quilt below maple leaf-stain transferred to the white paper & I stamped some of the couching cloths with real leaves.

Below is a detail of a larger wall hanging.

With the next quilt I added threads to the slurry, sewed concentric patches to each sheet of paper. Detail first. There are hand quilting stitches too.

I called this quilt The Coming of Aging.

A friend, Ann Vicente, organized a show of works with hand made paper to be at Crafthouse in the 1990s.

It was an homage to Sharon Yuen who started Paper Ya. All the artists in the show had been influenced by her or studied with her.

I made two small pieces for that show. 

For both quilts I used paper made by each person in the show.

From there came a series that I made using paper from Paper Ya.

I was smitten with paper sheets made in Germany that had inlaid squares. With each sheet I subjected it to something--over gluing cloth squares, mostly, though this first one had vertical oil-stick calligraphy marks.

These quilts were simple to make & I think of the compositions as being elementary.

One of my favorites I made with old button cards I found in Maui, of all places.

That's it for now.