Pellon, patterns, and Lilliputians

Art Club 1972

The past is a scary place with or without plaid battle jackets and knickers. Thank heaven the yearbook photo is in black and white. I have a really bad feeling I'm wearing orange knee socks  with the gray and white plaid outfit. It looks like an costume for Gulliver in a Ray Harryhausen movie. The early Seventies were a dangerous time for the children of sewing mothers. Beware the doubleknits!

RIP Ray Harryhausen

So, I only post this frightening image because I want to tell the girl two places over, Nancy K., that I appreciate her experiments with Pellon interfacing and watercolors. We were both students in Gail Butt's advanced watercolor class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I was working with seamstress tissue pattern papers in my paintings, and she was saturating Pellon with rich color. We were both trying rubbing alcohol, glycerin, soap, and lighter fluid in our works.

Happy Mother's Day to all!

Nancy K. and her Pellon gave me the inspiration for our preschool Mother's Day cards.  We decorated Pellon butterfly cut-outs with Sharpies and water-based markers. Then we learned how to use eyedroppers to put rubbing alcohol on the Pellon.  If you haven't taught preschoolers to squeeze the black hat atop the eyedropper, and then unsqueeze, your life has been way too easy!

  And thanks, Nancy K., wherever you are.

Washed the art smocks. Set the laundry basket out for the preschoolers to fold shirts. I was hoping somebody would find my missing lavender crew sock. The sock was snarled inside a paint shirt. Sadly, we did not recover a missing perky purple flower headband.

I still love layering with sewing patterns in collages and papier mache. But even as I miss my sewing mother this Sunday, I don't miss wearing her creations!

N. Ruder 1977, in a private collection

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder