Wedding veils – happy ever after?

 

These wedding veils bring a gothic eye to traditional fairy tales and question the idea of marriage being the ultimate dream for fictional heroines. The image above shows the No, no, no veil, on the left, designed for the reluctant bride, and a veil celebrating Thomas Hardy’s heroine Tess of the Durbevilles on the right. The ‘No, no, no veil’ was inspired by the idea of a reluctant bride, who is forced into an unwanted marriage, using her bobbins and thread, the only means of discourse she possesses, to reveal her inner thoughts and appeal for help. The veil on the right references the episode in Tess of the Durbeville’s story where she writes a note to Angel Clare on the night before they marry, telling him about her past, in case that knowledge would cause him to change his mind. It is only once they are married that she realises he did not find the note and when she confesses her chequered past he rejects her. The disintegrating paper represents the hidden note and the fragility of the marriage. The veil is entitled ‘Paper trail’ reflecting the path the story follows after the confusion over this slip of paper, which eventually leads to Tess’s trial and sad end.

This veil with its sparkling fringe reflects the allure of marriage for the gothic heroine. From a distance this sparkling fringe appears to be made of soft, smooth thread but closer inspection reveals that it is composed of rows of hard, sharp pins. Its title ‘Pinned down’ suggests the sharp reality of conjugal bliss and domesticity. These veils are part of a series based on research into Victorian gothic novels and domesticity and their relevance to contemporary life.

Stitched QR codes and what they can reveal

 This embroidered QR code links through to my website when you read it with a smartphone. However I first became interested in using QR codes as a way of hiding information in plain sight in a decorative way. The idea being that the message could easily be overlooked in the same way as domestic textiles and their makers often are. I sometimes hide text within lace patterns but QR codes can contain much more information in a smaller space. QR codes do have to be quite exact though for the camera on a smart phone to recognise them. My first attempts were made in black bobbin lace but they were not reliable enough to work every time. I tried working the codes at an angle so the squares were cloth stitch diamonds and alternatively with the squares as tallies, but neither worked very well. I also experimented with crochet squares but they became too large for the backgrounds I wanted. I then tried cross stitch embroidery straight onto my background net but that wasn’t reliable either. Eventually I found that cross stitch embroidery on counted thread fabric was the most effective way of producing the QR codes.

This curtain Insider information contains many coded messages that together form a narrative about the domestic environment. The words ‘Help me’ are stitched in human hair on to the curtain, which also includes an embroidered QR code. The code can be read to reveal the words ‘Escape while you can’ while the human hair contains the DNA of the seamstress. Combined with the veil of the curtain they seem a cry for help and a warning to others. Both types of embroidery reference Victorian domestic needlework, such as samplers and mourning brooches, and hint at a gothic tale of confinement and control.