Decay and Unravel

I am working on two Art Tag rounds at the moment - Decay - with the NCWCA group and Unravel - with the National WCA group. Both deadlines came immediately following the national conference in NYC. It meant that I had scant time to work on either of the pieces before and after the conference. 
Decay #1
I knew what I wanted to do for Decay, but it entailed a lot of sewing. A houseguest stayed with us right before my trip, which meant that I couldn't sew at all downstairs. While I couldn't work on Decay in NYC, I did do a lot thinking. When I got home, I spent half of Friday and all of Saturday working on my piece. As an alternative to the dress, my original concept, I had been thinking about making a boro-gi. I picked up some indigo-dyed paper at the Codex book fair right before going to NYC. I also had a funeral "kimono" made of paper from the Chinese funeral store. That klmono became my template. The assembled scraps of fabric felt unfinished. What made it decay? I remembered that I had a pile of old family photos given to me by my step-niece. Some were faded and stained. They were incorporated into the piece. I like it very much. 

Unravel
I actually conceptualized this piece first. Although I wished I could have created a Judith Scott piece, I didn't have the time to wrap and unravel a lot of material. My mind was fixated on zippers at the time...I had ordered some neat transparent zippers for my envisioned sewn piece for Decay...and among my rummage drawers, I found some cool 1960's style pull zips. The others - black feathers, old hand-made hammer, unraveled muslin snap tape, etc were simply things that I felt "went with" the black zipper.