The Seamstress narrative came from the contents of an elderly ladies home, which was packed into ten cardboard boxes by a house clearance company and put into a yard auction. I felt extremely moved by the fact that she had no family to lovingly sort through her belongings, as I have recently done with my own parents home. I bid on, and won the box that contained her sewing paraphernalia and some old birthday cards from the 1940’s. From this I learnt, among other things, that the lady, Ivy, was a seamstress and a spinster - although there had been a young man called Joe!

Very few of the actual contents from Ivy’s home were used in the final work; most of them came from my other collections - many of which have been won at yard auctions at previous times.

The piece was a double sided installation, the inside had real ivy growing, there were real (dead) insects and the little bird in the cage was a vintage taxidermy sparrow (Ivy Sparrow) - whereas the back had plastic ivy growing up a trellis, a wooden bird box with a fake bird in it and paper moths. 

This showed that the side of herself that Ivy allowed the outside world to see was a facade, a false front. But inside the confines of her home was the real Ivy, the shy and lonely spinster.

I made two books to contain my version of Ivy's story - you can see them at the bottom of the page and under the 'BookWorks' link.

The images above were all taken in a gallery

at a later date I reworked Ivy into an immersive installation (below)

The Book - there were two versions: the original sculptural paper version

and the slow stitched textile version

The Seamstress - the original sculptural paper book

Ivy Jane Sparrow - this 6" square fabric book tells Ivy's story in hand stitched words