I have been feeling ambivalent about this week's post. The story was hand-written and hand-embroidered directly onto a lovely, very delicate vintage cotton tea towel that I found at a local thrift store. I paid just a few dollars for the tea towel but the work is remarkable: absolutely precise and perfect.
A woman spent a great deal of time and effort on this towel and here I am, writing and drawing on it with an ink pen, adding my own creativity and my own less-than-perfect stitches. Would it have been better to leave the tea towel at the thrift shop? And what if someone else purchased it and used it as intended? It would end up being stained, or at the bottom of a drawer.
In the end, the remarkable work of the woman who made this towel was valued as next-to-nothing. There is a lot to be said about the value of women's work so - not unsurprisingly - the story for this piece is about girl's power and education.
The model for the little girl was lifted from the Bon Point catalog. Bon Point is French fashion house specializing in high-end children's clothing. The young models in the catalog all seemed to live magical, moody and impossibly well-behaved lives. A "bon point" is also a type of reward that well behaved French school children receive in school. And although I received plenty of bon-points in school, I have lots of feelings about the system.
As for the cape, it comes from a childhood memory. A great aunt of mine, who was a seamstress, made a blue cape for me when I was three or four years old. The cape had a hood lined with rabbit fur and two slits instead of pockets. And it was lined with purple silk. It was incredibly well made, extravagant gift and even though Aunt Denise did not intend to convey a political message, her attention made me feel worthy and special in a manner that I never forgot.
Oh! And the title is a nod to Jonathan Franzen, who book, The Corrections is just about the opposite of girl power (at least in my opinion).
So there you have it: the correction to The Corrections. Lots and lots of layers in this week's work.
Enjoy.