Debby Henning
"A Pathway Shared for Life"
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| (Photos by Patrick Fraser) |
Marriage is about the merging of two lives and creating a new pathway together.
This accordion-fold book represents the 48 years of marriage with my husband. My wedding dress had been languishing in a box for all of those years. I felt giving it a new life would be more appropriate than just letting it decay in a box, so I cut up my wedding dress with some help from my 89-year-old mother. The stitching on the dress basically fell apart when we tugged on it. We had a lot of laughs looking at the dress.
We machine needle-felted and sewed the pieces to an interfacing using the under layer and possibly silk upper layer of the dress. I used the tulle from my veil to create a top layer for the pages, stitching it down by machine with a glitter thread.
There are 24 pages representing the 48 years of our married life. Our paths have crossed over each other every day throughout our years together. The pathways of X’s were all done by hand stitching with Pearl Cotton thread with a color for each of us. The stitched pathways are under the buttons that represent the events and bumps in the road we encountered. On the first few pages, there are only a few buttons because life was easier when we were younger. On the fourth square, are many buttons for the year we bought our house. Some pages have buttons that represent the years we changed work positions, retired, or spent time caring for aging parents.
My mother helped me sort through all the white buttons in my stash. It was a fun project itself seeing all the different types of buttons that I had collected over the years. No, I do not need any more; I still have a lot left.
I started working on this project in February 2019 and completed it in July 2019.