Sewing Machine Activist
Are you in the business of creating a better world?
COMPASSION, ECONOMY & RESISTANCE
The Book
A compelling narrative of the most pressing issues of our time and how we might go about attending to them, alongside a re-imagining of the ‘good life’ to a kinder more symmetrical, and empathic world. AU$70 00
Compassion Economy & Resistance ISBN 978-0-9873639- 1 -6Book Description
A beautifully presented and illustrated coffee table book with 600+ full colour images, including portrait photography of women wearing Miranda’s superb millinery creations. An inspiring read that leads us through a re-imagining of the good life into a more caring and connected world.
The first two sections take an inventory of the fashion industries, collective harm on the environment and on society, challenging the apparel, fashion and textile industries to do better. Section three is a reckoning of our commercial, political and institutional realms that calls for fundamental change at every level with the central theme to involve uploading the feminine value system (the world of “we”) into our largely left-brained asymmetrical world.
Written through the authors personal lens, of a lifetime of breakdown and breakthrough, Green juxtaposes her journey, and the interminable war within her own mind, against the backdrop of a world at war with itself and at odds with nature.
A sweeping majestic big picture overview, of the world that we could be.
The Images
Text and Images in Tandem
My stitching table is where I consider the state of the world. It’s where I untangle my thoughts, the rhythm of the stitching a balm for that day’s ragtag collection of the wounds of modern living. As I traverse the quagmire of troubling thoughts and experiences of the day I both stitch and write in tandem, one form of expression feeding into the other, as I find nourishment and conveyance with fabric and pen. I am able to settle for a bit … to find rest amongst the processes … and a refuge of sorts.
So, you see … for every paragraph of text there is a picture to draw the eye, for every new idea there is something beautiful or striking to counterpoint its arrival. When what I have to say might bring fear or trepidation, there is a sequence of colours or a composition of images that will arrest… drawing the reader in, and assisting them forward.
If my words are sharp, the tender embrace of a beautiful woman’s gaze might bring light relief. If my tone is steely, the lively embellishments constrained in cubes of delight, might draw the eye and restore.
When the raw truth of a suggestion that something is sorely amiss in our world strikes at the heart, I have provided something of beauty in the visual form, to stroke the jagged wound of the unwelcome.
So, you see … just as stitching and other forms of creative expression assist me to move through the day, and to manage this topsy turvy world we all share, the symphony of colour, detail and form on the page might assist the reader to balance the soberly nature of the content with something that soothes and uplifts.
Just as I seek shelter in the theraputic processes, embedded in the acts of design and crafting, you the reader might be afforded some measure of respite and nourishment, by the fruits of such industry.
My crafting serves us both.
