Wabi Sabi Silk Flags

I found a big bundle of flag bunting in a garage sale many years ago. I have no idea of its purpose but that's another story.

My story is that I fell in love with the 12 very fragile silk flags that were scattered randomly along the lengths of the crudely sewn tape.

I lovingly patched and hand sewed the most fragile and torn sections and sewed them together to make a wall 'banner'. The silk was super difficult to work with as the machine stitching was at times tearing the fabric, as was ironing the flags. The dyes are very unstable and were coming off on the iron, onto other fabrics and at times even onto my damp hands. 

The finished work is nearly a metre square.

The title came to me as I was working.....

'The Fragility of Multiculturalism'

I took great pleasure in creating this piece - there is something about silk...the noble little worms giving up their lives to create beautiful, fine, lustrous thread which is woven into exquisite fabric for our pleasure.

It seems appropriate to include some photos of the processes - taken in one of the old silk factories which we visited in Suzhou, China, in 2011.

Boiling the cocoons to kill the lava and to remove the sericin.

Finding the end of the thread.

  Woven onto spools.

 Making silk caps,

into quilt filling.

 Weaving.

 A big Thank you to all those millions of grubs who gave up their chances of flying free in order to make the silk fabric that I love to wear.