For wallpaper background swirling ideas:
Remembrance rituals
Home
Immigrant workers
Beauty in craft
“Anna and Laura Tirocchi, Italian immigrants from Guarcino, owned a prominent dressmakers shop in the Federal Hill area of Providence, Rhode Island, from 1915 to 1947. The Tirocchi sisters made dresses, blouses, and coats...” (“The Use of “Robes” by American dressmakers: A. & L. Tirocchi, Providence, RI” -Hilary Baker URI ) All pieces were made at the house, employing a crew of female immigrant dressmakers and seamstresses.
Like Tirocchi sisters’ story, I've been thinking a lot about immigrant people and their craft work, used as survival, economic self-sufficiency, therapy, skilled labor, messaging and record keeping.
While creating this pattern I was thinking about retaining and not losing parts of your past; about not losing memory of stories and skills in hand-work passed through generations; about the muscle memory in sewing that can stay with you through your life if you learned it as a child.
Within that swirling of ideas, was also the concept of time and labor, and invisibility; about doing work that is at home and solitary, and also creates networks and friendships with other stitchers and workers.
I've been reading about women using memory as a site for resistance. And thinking about the home as a space to restore ones spirit.
Motifs are:
Details of hand embroidered areas and bead work of the sisters many dresses.
Basic hand basting stitches, often hidden on the inside of garments.
Art that was inspired by nature, and floral motifs.
The many hands that worked on and touched a dress.
(Hands drawn in the pattern were modeled by genius dressmaker, Carmel Dundon, granddaughter of a seamstress, my boss and friend. Her grandmother’s scissors (still often used) are in this wallpaper.)
