Sewn, Pressed, and Packed

Washington’s Standard Part 5: Home Stretch

Stitching took some trial and error, even after testing. I opted to place, pin, turn under, pin, and then baste the stars. Initially, I worked one at a time with a hoop to stabilize the work, but realized I could baste them in groups of three or four, shifting around to leave room to work with the hoop.

The hoop made the work much faster, since hands could concentrate on sewing rather than stabilizing. Once the sewing started, it became repetition. Like essays, once the initial research is done and the outline written,  execution becomes a job of work, not inspiration, unless you can focus on the satisfaction of a finished product. (I am struggling to stop researching and keep writing; this is a metaphor about a paper and a thesis.) The hoist had to be cut twice, and is likely a little larger than it should be for the scale. The original hoist has been trimmed over time, so creating a scaled version from what remains would be inaccurate. I started with the measurement I was given and ultimately chose a size that looked right and was workable. Three baby grommets (eyelets in this case) finished the replica. Job done.

To ship this, I pulled out my collections manager skills and made a foamboard clamshell held closed with low-tack tape; the flag traveled inside, in a Mylar window taped on three sides. Anything to maintain that pressed finish! The clamshell also made a display easel, handy for admiring the finished item when it arrived. Job delivered.

All that said, look at that flag! It’s so cute! It’s so blue-and-white! So like a field of stars in an expansive sky, like the dark, endless sky that stretched above colonists’ heads in the 1770s. Philadelphia in 1776 was light pollution-free. Surrounded by Enlightenment texts, at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, simple stars on a blue field evoked the mysteries of natural philosophy and the “natural rights of man.” Washington’s Headquarters flag is as semiotically revolutionary as the Declaration of Independence. We don’t think about “graphic design” as an eighteenth-century discipline, but flag design was. Although the origin of this flag, and the similar canton of the American flag, are lost to us, we can consider them anew this year and see how deeply soaked they are in Enlightenment ideas. Those fifty stars today, and the “e pluribus unum” they represent, symbolize the consent of the governed, the voluntary association and alliance of states, based on ideas described centuries ago by Locke, Rousseau, and Paine. Connecting the flag today to the revolutionary ideals of the past changes how I see it.