Category:

Quilting and connecting

9/7/2025

If you stitch it (in public) they will come

An artist-instructor friend advised me, as I was preparing my portfolio to apply to art school, that if I was planning to include images of my quilts and rag rugs and mosaic’d vessels, I should group these as Craft Use Objects.

I’m sure she didn’t mean it but the word ‘craft’ seemed to have a stink to it. And the fact that these items were for actual use (as opposed to useless?) was also a bit whiffy. I spent the following six years of fine-arts studies needling at the question, What’s the use of art?

I eventually found two good uses for creating exhibition-type paintings, sculptures, floorworks and fibre installations: making use of used, disused or misused materials instead of consuming new materials; and growing community through the gathering of those materials. I monkeyed around with job-site debris delivered by construction workers; broken toys from my sister’s kids and her friends’ kids; old embroidered linens, doilies and buttons from my mother’s friends and other artists; jeans from my brother and others; old paintings from my father; burlap coffee bags from the coffee-roaster; pennies from friends; and businessmen’s white linen shirts from, well, businessmen.

In the end it all boiled down to one three-word artist statement: Making is connecting. This is not an original idea and maybe a little obvious but it’s been my roadmap for creating ever since.

Which brings me to “Shatter”, the title of my latest virtually/almost/nearly finished not-at-all-stinky Craft Use Object. (After many decades of making quilts I’ve decided that any quilts that are not direct copies of a pattern, that have taken on a personality of their own, deserve a title just as much as Artwork.) This one has emerged as a field of shattered circles, a project that shatters any expectations for this quilt and this quilter. It also relates to the times of its making, November 2024 to June 2025 — need I say more? “Shatter” is a cozy, slightly chaotic project that embeds silks and satins gifted by friends, as well as hours of focus, frustration and endurance, all in the service of creating the many meanings of comfort.

Hand-quilting detail, Shatter quilt, 2025 (Carlyn Yandle)

The sunny, warm weather this past week made it possible to take “Shatter” to the park to spread out for a few hours of the victory lap in quilt-making: encasing the mess of batting and threads in a precise frame of binding through hand-stitching. We made it! And it’s square! -ish!

AN OUTDOOR TRADITION: When there’s no room indoors to spread out a queen-sized project, quilting is necessarily a seasonal activity. (Carlyn Yandle, 2003)

“Shatter” is an attention-getter. The pie-piece blocks of satin and gold top-stitching shimmer in the sun against the matte midnight-blue cotton background. It compelled some park visitors to comment as I bent over the binding. Nice quilt. I love quilts. Did you make this yourself? My grandmother was a quilter. I would love to learn to quilt. I found a great vintage quilt. Do you fix zippers? (Please stop asking me if I fix zippers.) By the end of the day “Shatter” was also the site of a long discussion with a friend broken up by her break-up. When all was said and done we stood up, hugged and I rolled up the quilt, the equivalent of seeing someone out of the office.
It remains rolled up, ready as another sunny, social setting or a cozy, tears-absorbent spot to stretch out on or curl up in.

MAKING IN PUBLIC: The neighbourhood park on a sunny, dry day is the perfect/only space for hand-stitching a large project.

Originally published on Substack earlier this summer.

Beyond a cozy retreat

1/10/2025

Handmade quilts of found fabrics layer up multiple meanings

The squirrels that inhabit my head have been threatening to start a roller derby so I’ve shut it all down by doing something constructive: I’m literally wrapping myself up in my ongoing Perfectly Imperfect quilt project.

I’m a construction team of one these dark days, bound up in binding together found satins, brocades and denim with cotton batting and mattress ticking. In this inherent need to make, I am a lady-in-waiting, making myself useful while the MAGA/Trump/tech-oligarchy snarl takes hold later this month.

Hand-stitching around design elements that are more sawtooth than circular in the Perfectly Imperfect quilt.

I made my first quilt out of old bedsheets and pillowcases as a teenager for my little sister shortly after my mother gave me my first sewing machine and before I knew what I was doing. When my skills were adequate, I advanced to birthday and Christmas gifts and my own homey items like table runners and cushion covers, then moved on to crib quilts for babies, many of whose names I’ve forgotten and are now in their 30s, and for weddings for couples who are still together or have since divorced.

Many moons ago an aunt gave me a spiral-bound notebook with a picture of a quilt on the cover so I used it to stuff in all the photos, notes, design sketches and written correspondence related to each project. I see this book now as a personal history of learning about pattern, colour and cloth. I try not to wince at the early projects in the way that you should not berate the kid you once were. That bulging notebook is as multilayered as the under-construction Perfectly Imperfect quilt. Both are useful, improvisational objects embedded with explorations in form and function, and memories of the endurance, joy, frustration, satisfaction and an acceptance that the maker herself is a work in progress.

Laying down the layers for basting in place. An added border of string-pieced satins and silk echo the inner design and bring the quilt to my preferred dimension of queen-size.

By the time I left the newspaper and started art school the notebook was full so it felt like the end of those life chapters. I relied on some of those skills to lead hand-stitching sessions during post-graduate work but it took a pandemic lockdown to see the connective power of quilt-making. Friends and strangers found ways to share unwanted fabrics via drop-offs and pickups through social-media groups and met up online for hand-stitching sessions that opened up a safe space for talking through these curious times.

For those of us without a long-arm sewing machine, ‘in-the-ditch’ machine-stitching a queen-sized quilt is an endurance test.

I finally bought another spiral notebook and started gluesticking in photos and design sketches from my more useless quilt-y artworks. Then two years ago last Fall, after increasingly difficult weeks caring for my brother, I pulled out a stack of six-inch-square blocks in a pale palette of aqua-blues, creams, greys, and pinks left over from my 16-year-old nephew’s crib-sized quilt. I grounded the palette by adding twice as many matching blocks in earthy browns and navy blues, stitching them all into rows and then into a queen-sized quilt top. I call that one Rough Patch, fittingly unfinished.

A quilt makes its mark at births, birthdays, seasonal holidays or political moments, marriages, friendships, illnesses and in remembrance. I like the idea of a quilt for a new human who isn’t here yet or may arrive after I’m gone. Imperfectly Perfect, composed of unstable, slippery, fraying fabric scraps and made during the time when Americans fell for the grift of the century, feels like it’s for that person. I hope they like it.

Repairing is caring

9/21/2024

Making things better requires thinking creatively, not throwing it all away

Can you do me a favour, a neighbour-friend asked, and I knew his sweet, destructive dog had done it again.
The pup, bred to herd, over large tracts of land, has made uneven progress adjusting to his home in an inner-city townhouse. Over the past year I’ve patched up a sofa seat cushion he was on his way to destroying; re-stuffed his new, disemboweled dog bed; and fancy-stitched an L-shaped rip on a beloved, specially-ordered Western-style shirt (the friend’s, not the dog’s).

On his most recent visit, his owner held up Exhibit A: a favourite art T-shirt with a bite-shaped chunk out of the edge of the sleeve. And then Exhibit B: the same cherished Western shirt I repaired a while ago, now with gaping hole in the lower back.

Do you think the dog might be trying to tell you something? I asked. He gave me the look of one who’s heard that line a lot. But I kid. It is my pleasure to do these repairs. He knows it and I’m sure he felt just as good about bringing over a slow-cooked pork roast when I was consumed by grief.

Making is connecting. I share this no-sew method to inspire others to think twice before chucking a favourite piece of clothing. To me, this twice-repaired shirt is a perfectly imperfect object, now rich with the layer of meaning of That Time the Puppy Ate A Hole In My Shirt, over the previously added layer, Fancy Embroidery Where the Puppy Ripped My Shirt. It all connects with the Japanese idea of kintsugi, the obvious and artful repair of broken objects:

Making useless stuff like artwork is fine for the gallery but I get more satisfaction making useful things out of material that’s already in the world, items that would otherwise be thrown away because we know there’s no “away.”

This week, that satisfaction came from taking a can of flat black spray-paint to a metal filing cabinet (everyone’s dumping them; the local Craigslist listings alone showed 36 for sale and three for free this weekend) and converting it into a bamboo planter on casters.

Perfectionism is part of a runaway capitalist system of productivity and purchase. It exists as a superlative in a black-and-white worldview. I distrust this fixation on perfection and what some will do to try to get there.

There is no time or space in this system for down-to-earth conservation ideals like “make do and mend” or “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Those Great Depression directives feel quaint in this Great Production era of stuff, even in the face of climate catastrophes.

Repairing is caring — for the object or material, for the person who connects with it, for its history and against wastefulness. It’s a wabi-sabi mindset that values time-worn objects and materials in direct opposition to the sterility of perfectionism. Sharing ideas and building on that knowledge knits up community and reinforces our commonality despite divisive political forces.

This is how repairing a shirt for a friend or finding new life for a throwaway thing and sharing those ideas are small political acts of resistance to market forces that see us as individual consumers to be fuelled with desire for luxury and novelty.

Living simply, with our imperfections relegates self-identifying artists and makers to the fringes in a perfectionist world. I happily make do with that.

Materials matter, and Those of loved ones gone can live on

5/26/2018

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Clockwise from top left: Great-Grandfather Quilt; Dad's Throw; Tie Cushion. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Materialistic. People say it like it's a bad thing.
But there's not necessarily anything selfish or hoardy or wasteful about feeling deeply connected to materials. If we all started being a little more materialistic we might not be now contending with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or space junk. I want no part with parting so quickly from one-use-life materials when a meaningful second life is possible.

So when a couple of people dear to my heart were clearly torn about parting with some favourite clothes of their loved ones who recently passed away — one within this year, the other within 18 months — I felt it too.

These bits of cloth are interwoven with the memory of the wearer, his style, the special occasions and the everyday. Just looking at them hanging in the back closet brought the son, the wife, to tears. Some of that emotion is also about feeling at odds with what to do with it all. Yet holding onto useless things, especially in this town where we're so squeezed for space we have to go outside our living spaces just to change our mind, can even bring on some shame or panic that we can't let go, move on.

I felt the potency of the pieces too, and suggested selecting a few items to be repurposed into something that would bring comfort, and in remembrance.

The first project this spring was the Great-Grandfather Quilt, for the first of the next generation who missed meeting his great-grandfather by 9 months. The second was Dad's Blanket, which lives on one of the two matching sofas where father and son watched the baseball in his last three years. The third is a lumbar-support cushion made from silk ties that's parked on his wife's favourite reading chair.

It takes a bit of faith to allow those blazers and sweaters, ties and dress shirts to leave their dark cupboards and be subjected to my fibre-art experiments but I'm grateful they did. It was a little unnerving, plunging wool blazers into a hot-water-wash and tumble-dry, or severing several silk neckties in one swipe of the rotary cutter, but that's the deal with making and innovating: sometimes you have to take a deep breath and boldly go, risking failure.

And there is definitely failure in all of this making. Design changes happen on the fly, dictated by odd dimensions of the pieces and unpredictable fabric behaviour. (It's a thing.) Trying to wrestle slippery bias-cut silk, unstable cashmere knit and coat-heavy woven wool into submission enough to lie flat together is a test of one's patience. The trick is to embrace imperfection and keep the big picture in mind. I think about the Gees Bend quilters I saw a few years ago at Granville Island and the gospel spiritual song two of them sang at the start of their talk, and I say a little prayer myself: God I hope this works.

The other challenge is creating works that resonate with the spirit of the original wearer, so it's not just a matter of chopping up the clothing into tiny unidentifiable pieces to be re-fabricated in a generic quilt. You don't want to be too literal either, appliquéing ties into a Ties Quilt or (creepier) using every last button and pocket or (horrors) just sewing all the clothes together into a blanket or something.

Binding the one blanket with necktie fabric and appliquéing the suit labels in one corner of an army blanket backing (for the man who served in the US Army) felt like the right balance.

I post each Remembrance Pieces project on Facebook to inspire other material girls and guys, and to pay my respects to the stuff of life and to those of this life no longer.

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Art student's off-grid heater would make quite the gift

12/19/2014

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Dear Santa,

I know I haven't written since I was a kid, and when it comes to wants, I'm pretty much good. Unlike a lot of my neighbours who rent homes that are slated for demolition in the coming year or who have to hit the food bank at the end of every month when the money runs out, I'm safe and secure — for now.

You see, I'm a bit of a prepper. I worry about the security of all our food and the hikes in cost of living in the era of climate change so I've been doing workarounds for a lot of that. I have a kitchen garden and my main way of getting around is by bike. My work- and social life surrounds making, mostly with materials that have already served their primary purpose. If the power grid or the banks fail, I can at least charge up my bike lights and headlamps with my Biolite camp stove, using bits of cardboard and twigs so I can get out there and be of some use. My one weak spot, though, is heat. Condos with wood-burning fireplaces being a rarity in these parts, I would have no choice but to go outdoors and hang by the bonfires in the streets.

But now I see there is the Egloo, a table-top terracotta dome-thing that can throw off 70C degrees of radiant heat using just a few votive candles. Pant! Pant!

It's the brainchild of Marco Zagaria, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Trouble is, it's not quite available yet. Zagaria has been hand-making the prototypes on a potter's wheel (promo video below) and is currently crowd-sourcing funding — already surpassing his goal by 15 per cent at the time of this writing — to have them mass-produced. So here's where you come in, Santa. I don't know if I can wait, what with us all teetering on this edge of the Ring of Fire and seismologists referring to the imminent major earthquake as The Big One. I figure if you can squeeze your girth into a gas fireplace exhaust vent you can put an Egloo under my tree pronto.

However, as is my nature, I am prepped for the disaster of that not happening as well, so I've sourced some of Zagaria's own research and have latched onto a snippet of his virtual collaboration that he tagged as one of his YouTube 'favorites', a simple arrangement of one clay plot bolted inside another, resting on some thin cinderblocks. (See YouTube clip, at bottom.) It ain't pretty, but it will do the job in a pinch and uses stuff in my immediate vicinity.

Just goes to show, it takes a creative like that Italian art student to arrive at that balance between form and function that marks brilliant industrial design, which begets attraction which begets demand which begets profit motive which begets financial backing which begets wide-scale production which begets marketing to preppers like me.

What am I saying? — you're Santa. Surely you know all about the value of artists in economics and sustainability innovations.

Wishfully,
Carlyn

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QR button blanket: Epic fail or a larger reading?

3/21/2014

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After three months of sewing one donated button after another into a giant QR code, the big moment arrived this week: time to stand back and scan that baby with a reader app, translating this quilt-thing to read, "The devil is in the details."

Except it didn't read. Don't panic!, I thought, then spent the entire next day working with a photo image of the QR Button Blanket, Photoshopping in more buttons and darker buttons and bigger buttons, trying to add the minimum amount of density for the software program to register the pattern and work its magic to produce the punchline. No luck; even a sliver of white in one button cluster puts a wrench in the wholecloth works. I filed this one under the category of Epic Fail, not worth finishing it as intended, framing it in black bias binding. I do not want to create something that is 'still' good; I want the thing to be good, full stop.

Failure demands confronting the why. Why conceive such a laborious, risky project in the first place? Why endure the painstaking process when half-way through it was becoming abundantly clear that this was not going to 'read'?

But there is another power here, and that's tied to the process beyond the product. The achievement may lie in the endurance (in an increasingly A.D.D. world) that is not necessarily attached to the product after all. It may be in seeing it through, without the promise of a sure result. The power may lie in the humble, everyday materials and the community of women who contributed all those bits of plastic saved from the waste stream. (There should really be a global ban on production of billions of plastic buttons. Plant-based plastic, bone, wood, and leather- or fabric-wrapped tin buttons eventually return to the earth.)

But what's really starting to click in for me is the cultural reference of this button-grid design. A decade ago, it might have been viewed as an oddly arranged colour field or an abstracted grid but we're so acclimatized to codes that the pattern begs to be 'read.' The fact that this is irresolvable might be annoying. And that's interesting.

Wavy Gravy, marker on synthetic velvet, 58" x 43"

The possible multiple references could be more engaging than the one answer provided by a QR reader app. There's something to be learned in the discomfort of the open-endedness.

Moments like these, I seek out the artists who have embraced what New York artist Polly Apfelbaum calls the 'tough beauty' of visually exciting works that incorporate everyday materials in surprising ways. Apfelbaum, who calls herself a bad crafter, articulates the process of hard work in this video.

"I work all the time," she says, without a schedule and in a highly experimental way. "You make the work and then you hope for the best."

"It's very important to get your fuck-you back."

I'm going with that.

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Discarded doilies demand attention

8/9/2013

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Wrap (I), polyethylene fibre, 96" diameter

In my fourth-year sculpture class venerable artist and (now newly-retired) Emily Carr instructor Liz Magor took one look at my first installation of a kazillion doilies stretched across the cavernous classroom and said, "You seem to be in love with doilies. Maybe it's time to break up and find something else to love."

It was just the kind of motivation I needed to embark on a three-year challenge to bring the thrift-shop throwaways into the gallery fore.

Wrap (II), polyethylene fibre, 96" diameter

I admit I am in love with spidery, handmade doilies. My hands barely know the work that goes into their tiny filigree patterns. Following a complex pattern is a highly meditative exercise in concentration, patience and commitment. Their circular designs reflect the mathematical patterns of coral, brain, bibb lettuce.

But the real power of those little doilies for me is their symbolism. Each one represents its maker, invariably an older woman who has clearly worked this way with her hands for many, many years, who probably learned from her mother, who learned from her mother. When I spot them in heaps in a plastic basket on a thrift store shelf, 50 cents each, I am quietly horrified. How can all these humble labours of love, these overlooked objects of household protection, be reduced to almost no value? And am I still talking about the handmade items or their makers? I've been tangling up the two for a long time — for too long, some might say.

Flo (I), acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"

For three years I've been pushing the doily into new dimensions, trying to make the invisible visible. Mixing them up with industrial materials like mortar and Tyvek. Using patterns from the back of 1950s Ladies Home Journals to turn eight-inch-wide doilies into eight-foot-wide doilies. Messing with the macho painting conventions of Abstract Expressionism from the same era.

The show went up at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre lobby last week. I don't know what the concert-ticket-holders will think of giant doilies hanging from railings, the small sculptures of unfathomable petrified doilies or painted fields of doily patterns, with names like Flo (after my grandmother with skilled hands and a bold spirit) and Persistent Grey.

Ravages (I), found cotton doilies, mortar, dimensions variable

I'm sort of resigned to the idea that many will find it all weirdly decorative. Maybe Magor would say that now I really need to find another object to love. But for me it's a mission accomplished. I've somehow managed to fool everyone with the promise of Art and filled the pristine, privileged gallery space with doilies.

Is my love affair over? I'm trying not to think about it too much. Over-thinking has never helped me.

Unlaced continues at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre until Sept. 23, 2013. Gallery Hours: during QET performances or by appointment. Contact: Connie Sabo, gallery curator, 604-505-4297

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Free store in Vancouver — finally!

7/19/2013

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Image found at vancouverisawesome.com

I've been thinking for a long time that Vancouver needs a Free Store, just like the most popular 'retail' store on the Gulf Island of Lasqueti. And now there it is, inside the old vault of a former dim sum warehouse in the 800 block of East Hastings.

The East Van Free Store is a community/art project hosted by the Red Gate Collective, with the whole point being actual social engagement (as opposed to virtual a la craigslist) and it's getting some media attention (CBC radio interview with Collective member Julia here).

Score! Felt pens and new Moleskin.

It's also about to get more public attention after its imminent relocation to the storefront of this studio and performance space. At the time of this writing the old safe room is open Tuesdays from 4-10 pm but I think this thing could take off due to popular demand. I dream of a chain of Free Stores, with the City offering grants to manage them, as a way to reduce landfill — that is, if the giant thrift store chain eight blocks east doesn't start squawking about unfair market advantage.

Because really, it's hard to go into retail battle with a free store, a potential paradise for everyone from hoarders who will find no barriers to bingeing on stuff to minimalists who need to purge to feel normal, and everyone in between — including makers in need of raw materials.

Lasquetians have been enjoying the social hub that is the purpose-built Free Store (and recycling depot) for many years. It's almost impossible to not stop by, for the conversation and the conversation pieces often donated anonymously. The social engagement mostly happens on the sheltered porch lined with shelves full of books and whatnots as the clothing part of the store is only open two days a week.

A few gems — the truly useless, confounding items — make the Free Store Gallery, an educational/art feature of the islanders' community website.

This is where keen-eyed local photographer Kristen Charleton posts her images of Free Store junk (her portrait of a donated rusty tin can of utensils is below) in a sort of lighthearted shame-the-dumper-donor series, evidence that even the truly undesirable has value.

I've long relied on the Lasqueti Island Free Store as an important supply of raw materials for various projects.
A sampling of works made to comfort and discomfort:

Free Store Flannel Quilt, 2003. Found cotton flannel shirts, fabrics.

Rag rug, 2005. Found cotton fabrics, 40"W x 72"L

Detail of 'Work II", 2010. Flannel work shirts on burlap, 32"W x 32"H

Seismic Rug, 2011. Found mixed-fibre fabrics. 60" diameter.

Ravages, 2013. Hand-made cotton doilies and mortar, approx. 18"

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That's one mother of another need met

6/7/2013

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In case you want to know, this is a picture of what is called beaching gear — at least in Prince Rupert, B.C.

It's the kind of passing sight that makes a city girl demand that the car we're in be stopped and reversed. Now. Because even though I had no idea what I was looking at, I knew that this was another fine example of one of my favourite truisms, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Photos must be snapped so someone who knows about these things could explain.

I found just the guy, a cousin-in-law. He knew the owner of this curious object well. (It's a small town.) "Oh, that's in Seal Cove," he said. His buddy needed to be able to tow his... (I want to say seaplane here, but that might not be right)... out of the harbour, and this Caddy, with its front-wheel drive, was just the jalopy for the job. But how does it stay up, with only two wheels?, I asked (and then again, not quite getting it). It was finally established that some metal bits forged to the front end provide enough counter-weight for the thing to balance on two wheels. An engineering feat!

But what I really liked about this innovation was the extra effort the inventor made to make the beaching gear more, uh, seemly, I guess: the retrofitted tail lights; the back-end paint job that tied it all together. For some reason it reminded me of the stump of a leg; you know some vital working parts are missing but it's heeled over nicely.

Objects like these straddle that satisfying space between utility and art. Here in Seal Cove, it was pretty much overlooked, but plunk it down at MOMA and now we're in a conversation with more legs than this beaching gear's wheels: artist intention, context, use value versus art value, etc.

There is a certain soulfulness in these intriguing/peculiar objects that squeeze into existence between the tight parameters of lack of money or access and a pressing need. This school bus re-purposed as an underground... (tornado shelter? food cellar?) also packs a visual punch.

I'm intrigued by the happy accidents that can turn a necessary invention into an art object or an artwork into a functional object after the fact. On a grand scale it leads to some of the most enduring, visually interesting cities, like the narrow labyrinth of streets of Tokyo that trace terraced rice fields or the watery thoroughfares of Venice. This slow, organic development of an urban landscape is at odds with the speculative profit-driven mega developments currently rapidly changing my city's landscape.

But our need to negotiate these monolithic structures will result, over time, in inventions that contribute to an increasingly vibrant culture. We get glimpses of that with every passing pedaller working for Shift: Urban Cargo Delivery here in Vancouver, or as far as Bangkok's streets teeming with ever-advancing Tuk-tuks.

Innovating out of necessity creates human connections, from one guy's beaching gear in a sleepy cove outside Prince Rupert, B.C. to corporate shifts on the streets of Paris. (Take a video ride-along below:)

Image from vancouverfoundationawards.ca

Image found posted on www.modderpoel.nl

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Sanitary Doily gets its 15 minutes

5/31/2013

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Sanitary Doily, a finalist in the City's sewer-cover competition.

I'm deluded enough to believe I can survive on an art practice in Vancouver but I am under no illusion that my Sanitary Doily will be selected to grace the city's sanitary sewer covers for the next century.

But I couldn't resist designing my tribute to a traditional handmade use-object's chief function: to conceal and pretty-up unsightly evidence of everyday life. Sanitary Doily is a stink bid but damn if it didn't make it as a finalist among the more than 1,000 entries in the City's open competition.

The design borrows from actual patterns, with the swirling core used here to convey a flushing toilet action. (In retrospect, the swirl should be reversed. This is not Australia.) The surrounding negative spaces are reshaped as random water droplets while just managing to maintain pattern integrity. It is intended to be whimsically informative, enhanced by the prominent inclusion of the City of Vancouver into the lacework. It is conceived as an imperfect, pleasing intervention in a manufactured landscape.

Just what two designs will be selected for the storm sewer and sanitary sewer covers will be announced this Saturday afternoon, June 1, at the Ironclad Art Manhole Design Challenge exhibit at the Interurban Gallery, 1 East Hastings at Carrall Street. (The exhibit of all design entries is now on display through June 8, 1-5 p.m. where you can vote for your favourite, or do that here.)

I did a little fisty air punch when I was notified that Sanitary Doily was not rejected out of hand, mainly because I see it as a small victory in our culture where exquisitely handmade lacework can be found heaped in plastic bins at local thrift shops, at 50 cents each. I know how much dedication is required to make a doily because after decades of practice I can just manage to crochet a crude one. To me, the way we treat those little spiderwebby lace fragments of yore is symbolic of the level of honour and value attributed to that last generation of women who mastered that domestic art form. Not so much.

Image from junk-culture.com

Doilies are just another kind of mark-making, albeit traditionally in the home, so naturally I adore New York City crochet artist Nathan Vincent's crocheted manhole-cover, which makes its mark in the streets. (See more of his manly crocheted objects here.)

Meanwhile, I'm left thinking about what's next for Sanitary Doily. It won't be cast in iron any time soon, but I'm kind of loving the idea of re-injecting it with a little of the original use-object value, like Brooklyn artist Ronda Smith's NYC sewer cover throw pillows. (Or maybe it's just her pitch I love: "Who wants to snuggle up to a SMALL NYC SEWER manhole cover??? I DO!!"

Her series of domestic artworks are photo transfers of actual sewers but thanks to the wonders of Photoshop — and my Photoshop wiz of a brother — I could fudge the whole thing (see below).

Admittedly, a Sanitary Doily pillow wouldn't have the power of her iconic, beat-up photographed objects. And anyway, I would be more inclined to turn the image into a toilet seat cover.