15 down, 10 to go…

I recently finished no. 15 in the Defining Moments series! Now with just ten more to meet our goal I am really feeling the momentum. However, I must pause to whip up some small bags for the arts guild so have pieced the background of no. 16 to inspire me from the wall.

The interesting part to me of no. 15 is I probably would have given the box to charity if I had come across it before I was working on this series. Thirty years ago we moved my mother-in-law to assisted living and cleaned out her home to sell it. I had long forgotten that we brought a box of hubs’ scouting stuff, old photos and stuck it in the attic. Only last year when we performed a massive attic cleansing did this box reappear. It sat for a while in the basement, the other out of sight, out of mind location. Then the box came upstairs and I began to look at the treasure within. By that time I had started this series and knew these items would be invaluable to it at some point. To think I might have otherwise donated to charity for some Halloween costume makes me shutter now.

So no. 15 is about meeting my husband aka Mr. Right. This piece contains his Boy Scouts of America shirt, which was pristine as it had been mounted to cardboard by his stepmother.

I also used his Eagle Scout sash and shirt, print transfers of the Eagle Scout commendation dinner, newspaper articles and a journal article about this achievement, photos of him as a teenager, high school graduation, in the Army and the insignia patch from his fire department uniform. And since we met by a computer match in 1970, I added a custom image of data cards as well.

It seems each piece I do I am learning something, gaining new perspective which is really something I did not anticipate. For example no. 9: The Homemaker was about my mother’s occupation as homemaker who had a black domestic who did many of the tasks. The epiphany in doing that piece was that my mother pretty much solely raised three children as my father traveled on business about 80% of the time. How she did that and survived is way beyond me!

No. 15 really reaffirmed what an all-American guy I met and married. A Boy Scout and Eagle Scout, Army vet and firefighter. It doesn’t get much more all-American than that, and he has been my personal hero for 45 years.

In preparation for the next piece no. 16 which is about marriage, I screen-printed and embroidered our vows to my dismantled wedding dress. I was one who never wanted to renew my vows as it seemed all too redundant. And yet in stitching and printing them I felt a sense of renewal. This is the start of no. 16 which is the upcycled dress fabric.

In the aforementioned box of treasure was an old photo envelope. The photos were relocated but the negatives remained and were mostly of hubs as a young lad.

I decided these also were too precious to toss so I stitched them to screening and have now hung it in the bathroom window. It is really fun!