ELLE GAILEY
From antique lace.
49.5 x 31.75 inches
This piece reimagines an antique textile as a multilayered tapestry emerging in an altered state. It is a practice in capturing textiles in their original form and reimagining them using traditional craft techniques, creating something new from something old. The process of capturing a textile, printing it on fabric, and recapturing it in an altered state resulted in a tapestry showcasing each moment of the evolution from the original lace to the finished tapestry.
I started with an antique lace table runner which I scanned to preserve the textile in a moment it had begun to degrade. The scanned lace was printed and folded into a parcel, secured with a ribbon, and re-scanned and printed. I then used hand quilting and fabric appliqué techniques on the print and, midway through the work, scanned and printed the textile with needle attached. The final fabric print has been embroidered, beaded, and darned over before being built into a hand crafted Ipe wood frame with a light oil stain.