Stories Page 1

To me, thoughts of home are closely associated with reading, and the happiness, excitement, and contentment I find in books. My greatest reading pleasure is often found in books published during the time when even “ordinary” novels were illustrated. My shelves are filled with such books, including Esther Forbes’ A Mirror for Witches, Mary Webb’s Precious Bane, and James Gould Cozzens’s The Last Adam – although that book has only one illustration, the lovely woodcut on the book’s cover.

My pleasure in books is the starting point for the cloth I make, including hand-woven and hand-dyed linen panels with texts, and sometimes images, woven into the fabric. The story being told in these panels is of a nineteenth-century weaver and his daughter, their neighbors, and their farm. It is a story of home, and the joys, sorrows, and everyday occurrences found there. If not for the home of that weaver and his daughter there would be no story to tell, and no reason to make linen panels filled with words.