Skip to main content

Feeling Topsy Turvy and Whistler’s Mother takes a bath

This is what things looked like from my taxi window on Wednesday on the way back from Costco.

SAM_4008

It was cold but you had the feeling that spring was right around the corner.

SAM_4009

After all, we had just had a couple of really warm days,.

This is what is going on outside my window today.

SAM_4017SAM_4018SAM_4019

I come from Boston. I have lived through lots of March snowstorms. I have even lived through one May snowstorm.  I know that just because the calendar says that it is spring  it does not mean that the weather will be spring-like…but still…..

I also wanted to report on process of bathing Mrs. Whistler. I took the frame apart and pulled the crochet piece off of the satin covered cardboard. the handwork had been affixed with glue and was easy to peel off.

SAM_3998

I soaked the piece in a bucket filled with hot water and dish soap. The piece  was really dirty. The water in the bucket turned dark brown. After many rinses the piece was still stained.

 

I then filled the bucket with clean hot water and added Oxy-Clean. I let Mrs. Whistler soak over night and then rinsed well and rolled her up in a series of terry cloth towels and then hung her up to dry.

Here she is now, clean and most of the way blocked. (Blocking is using steam and heat to gently re size a piece after washing

SAM_4020

You can see that the nasty stains are now gone.

SAM_3991SAM_4021

I have to get a sheet of foam core and re assemble Mrs. Whistler in her frame.

I still don’t get why anyone would take the time to make something like this. But then again, why am I taking the time to restore this piece?

Labels:

Comments

  1. Ann_BMarch 20, 2015 at 7:03 PM

    So, what color will you make the background?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SandyMarch 21, 2015 at 4:15 PM

    I love 'Whistler's mother takes a bath'!
    Sandy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marty's Little CornerMarch 23, 2015 at 7:40 PM

    Looks wonderful after her bath ... oxy-clean is my go to cleaner. I guess you are spending the time because you admire all of the hard work and creativity that went into this piece. At least, that is how I feel. You did an excellent job of restoration, Sarah. Blessings!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sarah JacobsMarch 24, 2015 at 9:23 AM

    I think that what both my husband and i responded to was the contrast of the really excellent needlework with the really crude rendering of the image. The mix is kind of fascinating...it is hard to look away once to start to look at the piece.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Betsey KuziaMarch 27, 2015 at 6:50 PM

    A lot of hard work went into the piece. It does kind of grow on you!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...
1 comment
Read more

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

 I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night.  I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1)  אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה  God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2)  אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר   May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3)  יָאֵר יְהֹ...
8 comments
Read more

A Passover loss

 My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of  linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin.  You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...
2 comments
Read more