Fashionable doilies?

Ahhh...  I would like to claim to have just returned from my summer progress, just as the British royalty in the middle ages used to spend the summer traveling in order to outrun the plague; I would like to say that I too have spent the summer traveling.  But alas, I must confess that my travels have all been literary travels spent between the pages of books.  Which is ironic because I just finished reading The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, both of which are about the monarchy in the 1400s and 1600s.

Perhaps it is because of my recent readings, but I have again been preoccupied with home-making arts; embroidery, sewing, doily-making, canning & preserving, growing a small garden which I will never have time to maintain.  Sigh...  In any case, I feel that lately every time I go online I'm seeing doilies used in modern and creative ways.  Have you noticed this same thing?

My husband teases me that I'm secretly (or not so secretly) an old woman at heart because I love using doilies around the house to create delicate web shapes in the dust that adorns all flat spaces in my home.  And I'm sure you all remember growing up with doilies hanging on the kitchen wall, stretched over a flat pie tin or plate?  I know I do.



Lately, I've been seeing doilies used in much more imaginative ways that intrigue me and my secret inner old lady. For instance, I have seen collages of wall art created by stretching doilies in embroidery hoops and creating an artistic grouping.  It looks tidy and old fashioned, but yet modern.  Then I've seen doilies cut into smaller pieces and displayed in hoops, which lends the look of something otherworldly, almost exotic to something so familiar.  Look at the picture below and tell me it doesn't look like an exotic flower or a close up of an octopus.  Fabulous!



I've also been impressed with groupings of doilies, both together as a conglomerate, and seperately in frames.




 

One trend that I especially love is the vivisection of doilies to create one giant table runner that was never dreamed of by the original creators.  It is a little horrifying in the initial mutilation, but then results in a beautiful and fragile explosion of creativity.  It makes me want to Mod Podge a Frankenstein creature out of doilies; the ultimate dichotomy of unity and individualism, strength and fragility, beauty and disfigurement.  Maybe one day...



And now don't I feel ashamed for using my doilies in such a bland and expected fashion?  How completely boring!