Casgliadau Arlein

Home-made small wall hanging with three wooden sticks threaded through a blue fabric sleeve at top and bottom. Made from central plain white cotton panel with an appliqué circle of shiny blue synthetic fabric in the centre and four red felt appliqué hearts in all four corners. The blue circle itself is embellished with a red felt appliqué heart in the centre. In the centre of this heart are the two initials 'I M', picked out with small plastic faux pearls. The upper and lower edges of the white cotton fabric are encapsulated with two layers of fabric: a blue synthetic fabric with a white shiny semi-transparent overlay. The side edges of the main panel are raw edges which have been finished with overcast stitches in pink thread, whereby a pale pink plastic pearl has been threaded onto each stitch.

The hanging is embellished with a number of different beads and sequins, using different colour threads (white, pink, blue and purple):

It is embroidered with white plastic faux pearls (of two different sizes), metallic-dark blue and metallic-pink plastic beads and smaller pearlescent pink plastic beads. There are also small light blue glass beads which are used to hold small pearlescent pink faceted sequins in place. It is also embroidered with larger red faceted sequins (held in place by the metallic pink beads) and silver flat-disk sequins (secured with pearlescent with glass beads, which, however, also occur separately). It is also decorated with a round-diameter silver coloured metal braid (which has a white fibre core).

There is one line of machine stitches using white thread: this is used to stitch a single turn-back into the blue fabric running along the lower front of the hanging. All other stitches are done by hand. The stitching is generally coarse with knots and loops of thread on the reverse.

The wooden sticks have rough ends, some are splitting, and one can see the foamy core. They protrude from either side of the blue fabric sleeve but extend further on the PR side. The sticks have the bark removed, but some fragments remain. A long length of silver thread has been tied and wrapped around the three sticks on the upper PR of the hanging.