a white flag for peace

This is my finished flag and I am now excited anew about being part of this project. Today is International Peace Day and I am able to add my tiny grain of sand. I have been going through the entries and I can see that the blog is virtually flying high with them all! Mary Jane, you gave us such a wonderful opportunity, thank you.

After considering a (too) wide range of ideas and possibilities, I decided that fabrics would be my medium and white my colour of choice. My flag is made up by three different fabrics. A hand-woven piece I made with an old toy-loom, a larger piece of white cotton cloth and a shorter backing of white sack cloth, that you can see through the cotton. I used macramé cord to weave the first fabric and a long piece of cord is hanging loosely below the flag itself.

A close-up view of the upper part of the flag. Here you can see the woven fabric better. The white fringe is made up by the loose ends of the warp-threads.

The lower part of the flag, where I added a white twig that is being held in place by a couple of white ribbons. I spent more than 4 hours hand-fraying the edges of the cotton cloth!

Everything was hand-stitched here, I never used a sewing machine. Stitching by hand means spending more time with your work, establishing a long, calm dialogue with it and getting to know its needs and requirements better.

Here you can see the three fabrics better. The sack-cloth can really be seen through the cotton when the flag is hanging in an open space.

Sewing, weaving and working with cloths and fabrics are activities carried out in peace. Traditionally, fabrics were used to dress people and their homes, to protect them from the elements and to keep them warm and wrap them up with love and care. White is a peaceful, serene colour and it is also the colour of truce flags.

I will soon be posting photographs of my flag flying along with other nine flags made by the Spanish group of artists called 'Roots'.