more boro with jude - first thoughts

on starting this new class jude has again expressed some of my semi-formed thoughts and elaborated them further, developing and adding to the threads which have been weaving around in my head and showing up in my actions....

...wearing someone else's life …. I see that, but sometimes life is not the one you want so wearing someone else's works for a while – now I am surer of myself and the life I am in and I am happy to wear what I like and fashion around myself

….and at other times wearing someone else's clothes, the clothes of someone I want to be close to, has been a way of being in their life – so enfolding pieces of their clothing into my own is a way of keeping them with me

... use-full-ness ... mending, re-using and making from scratch have always been a part of my life – for generations of my family that has been the way, it's almost in our genes and it's a hard habit to shed – wearing hand-me-downs and re-fashioned clothes was normal, unravelling knitwear and re-using the yarn, patching, darning, collar-turning and side-to-middling all routine – so maybe this is why jude's attitude to cloth and it's use has such deep resonances for me and boro (contemporary or traditional) just fits right in

I have never felt truly comfortable in crisp, neat and fashionable clothing – leaving the world of work liberated me from their restrictions - through earlier classes with jude I have started working on the cloth around me, making it more truly mine – I recently got married in clothes I had refashioned and embellished with my own family and history and it felt better than any wedding dress someone else could have made for me

so i'm good and ready for this …. and i've got plenty of things to mend, blend, remodel and embellish - i'm not saying i'm ahead of the game, just fully on board and ready for the process ….... for once I am not worried about making the grade because the grade is not the issue …... making is the story and the story is the making....i think :-)