More than weaving

I finally decided that I needed to put ALL the handwork things that I have been working on in this blog. If you look at my blog, it appears that I don't get much done, but in reality, I don't get much weaving done. Instead, I make toys, knit, make clothes, patch my sons ever growing stack of holey clothes, or cut off holey pants to make shorts. I decided to day to upload a couple of things I recently finished.

I was reading Disdressed, one of my favorite sewing blogs, and was inspired Liesl's transformation of her daughters old toddler jeans into a skirt. I don't have toddler jeans left, but I do have lots of jeans from by son with blown out knees. I took a pair of these and converted them to a skirt for my daughter. I was too lazy to put on handmade yo-yos, so instead I used some ribbon that I had laying around and put it on top of pink bias. I put on a heart patch over a paint stain and used the leftover ribbon to swirl around to cover up the little paint stains. I thought it turned out really cute. I am thinking of making one for myself now.

Speaking of Liesl and Disdressed, she has a company called Oliver+S, a really cute company that makes kids' patterns. I bought the Sunday Brunch Pattern. I love it. It was easy to sew, although I did struggle for a little bit how to add length for my very tall but skinny daughter. Other than that, the pieces sewed together easily, except for a minor errata with the waistband, but I emailed the company and Liesl herself got back to me quickly and helped me find the fix. I have sewn two skirts with the pattern and one jacket. I have to say, I hate to set in sleeves, these are sewn in first and not set in, so the jacket went together very easily. I thought the outfit turned out very professionally. One of the skirts I modified by sewing on a flounce.

Finally, I found this great book called Wee Folks at the library. I thought it was a beautiful book. I have tried many times to make little toys for my kids. The books that I get often have beautiful toys, but I find them difficult to make, or that they don't turn out like the pictures. I feel that I am pretty crafty, so I find this kind of discouraging. But, this book was different. It has clear instructions, and the fairy/knights that we made came out wonderfully. The kids love them and so do I. My son, who is 8, sewed some parts of the pants and wrapped some of the pipe cleaners. Hope you enjoy them

Winged Rain Mounted

I finally got around to mounting my "Winged Rain" tapestry. I was not very happy with the weaving technique, but after blocking, I think it turned out pretty well. I am happy enough with it. I painted the canvas, then sewed the block tapestry to the canvas for a more imposing looking piece.

I am continuing to work on my sand pail tapestry although my progress if very slow. A few snow and ice days have slowed my work because of kids being home from school. I will try and get the progress documented soon.

I await word on my acceptance of my piece for the Connections exhibit. I should hear this week, and if I don't get accepted, I will post that work as well.

Time flies when you have children....

What has happened to the last five months? I posted at the end of June, and boom, here it is November already. I haven't seem to have gotten much art work done in that time. The kids were home most of the summer, with a few smatterings of camp, but by the time I dropped one off at one camp, then dropped the other one off, I would have an hour or so to do a little something before picking up the first one again.



I should be sorting through photos for an art project for a class I am taking on creativity. But, I decided to update this blog since it so woefully out of date. I have been riding my horse up until a week ago when my daughter came down with the flu, the car needed to have major repairs (this is the first and last Saab we will own--although I do like having a station wagon rather than a big SUV gas hog. I get good mileage, but where have all the station wagons gone?), and now I am suffering from a sore throat, hoarseness and a cough. I am not sure whether I picked this up from my daughter or my husband, but in any case, I don't really feel up to riding right now. Plus, my husband is really busy at work, which leaves me spending more time trying to keep things going here. Is there anyone out there who can really get stuff done? I feel as though I let so many things slide, the leaves are abundant in the yard, our horse fields are a wreck, the winter chicken coop is still not built, my weaving is slow, my painting is non-existent, and I have a dozen projects in my head I want to get to before Christmas. Then I still have the volunteer stuff to do at two different schools. Yes I know, whine, whine, whine, but I have to say when I woke up this morning, I listened to my children having a discussion on whether it was better to be eaten by a shark or a lion, and then headed to the kitchen to make themselves breakfast. This was indeed a first for them, letting mom sleep. I am lucky to be home with my kids and to even have some time to make art.



I have made some small progress on my sandpail weaving as you can see. I am almost ready to start weaving the sandpail and not just golden sand. In the meantime, I am trying to complete a second weaving of "Winged Rain" to submit to the ATA Small Connections exhibit. I have about 9 square inches more to weave. I have been weaving on that one some at night, but the last three nights I have vegged out in front of the TV sniffling, coughing, and generally groaning over my sore throat.



I hope I will have some more progress to show in the next few weeks....

Finishing other projects

I still seem to be finishing unfinished projects. I cut a bunch of clothes out for my daughter in the early spring thinking, piece of cake, these won't take long to make. Well, three months later, I am finally finished with all the ones I cut out. They are shown below. They look better on her than on the sofa!

Now, if I could just get back to weaving, maybe when both kids are in camp at the same time. Although, our fiber arts group has taken a summer hiatus. Between kids at home, sick children, visits with parents, vacations, and other commitments, no one is getting any art projects done. Now I don't feel so bad!

Tapestry workshop

I have finally started to weave my sand pail tapestry. I was lucky enough to have my husband look after the kids for two days, and I was lucky enough to take a workshop with Joan Griffin. I loaded up my Shannock in the back of the kid/dogwagon and hauled it to Joan’s house. I spent two days weaving with four other women from around the area.

The first day I didn’t seem to make much progress. I was in dire angst about whether or not I should include hatching in the piece. I did a bit of it, but I was stressing out trying to get my wefts to “meet and separate” in the same shed. That was causing me no end of grief. I finally decided to just go with the piece as I had drawn it and not to include hatching in this piece. Then, the weaving began to go much faster. I left having gotten almost two inches woven. This photo was taken a couple of days ago.










Of course, since then I have hardly had any time to weave. My kids are at camp this week, but by the time I get them there, get back here, work my horse, look after my setting hen (keep your fingers crossed for us, hopefully we'll have some chicks in a month) and the other chickens, and get a drink, I have about 20 minutes to weave, so much for my goal of getting this tapestry done my July 1. Goals are good though.

Now, I have to come up with my piece for my fiber arts group, medusa and warmth, hmmm, medusa and warmth….





Today, my husband just loaded up the car with the kids to take them to a driving range and there is a birthday party this afternoon. Now, if I can get off this computer and stop looking at everyone else's blog I can get some weaving done. Yeah! I did get an afternoon of weaving and feel I made some real progress. Here is the latest view of the sandpail project. I have about 3 vertical inches woven, only 11 more to go! (This tapestry is to measure 12x14 ".)

Winged Rain

I am a member of a fiber arts group that meets twice a month, “God willing and the crick don’t rise.” We missed the last meeting due to sick kids, costume design for a play, a boyfriend leaving for a stint on a salmon boat, loss of a car due to a camping trip… However, we started the group in January, and have been meeting regularly since. We have enjoyed sharing our work which is quite diverse. I bring my tapestries, sewing projects for my daughter, my knitting, and my art quilt (on which I have stopped work, gotta get back to it). We have a clothing designer, Rose, and a dollmaker who does amazing embroidering, Susan (see her blog Threads of Inspiration). We also have Kate, who make amazing sculptures out of different media (felt, foam, …). And finally, Susan who makes all kinds of things in her shop. Check out her blog at the Dandelion Factory.

We meet and have great things to eat. Share some laughs and then help each other with feedback and encouragement on our various endeavors. Two months ago, we started giving assignments that you could do if you wanted. We threw a bunch of words in a hat, drew two, and then you were supposed to design and make something around that theme. The first time the words that came out of the hat were telephone and closeness. Not a theme that I wanted to wrap my threads around! If you want to see the results of this first go round, then check out Susan’s posting on the projects on her blog.

This time we threw more words in a big pot and drew two out. It is funny how diverse the words are, and that they can come out with such an interesting theme. Considering that the first time I had thrown in mud and laundry and some of the other words included geometry, pigs, box, and orange, that we should get out telephone and closeness, I find rather amazing (mathematics and probability aside). Anyway, two meetings ago, we drew words again, and this time winged and rain were drawn.

I decided I needed to get going on some tapestry weaving. The last time I threw together a small quilt without much finesse. This time I decided to spend a bit more time than the 3 hours I spent on the first assignment and put together something I liked. I first went very literal as is my usual mode in life and took a photo of a drop of rain on a chicken feather. Although the feather is quite beautiful in the daylight, it lacks the life in the photo and I didn’t think I could capture its iridescence in a tapestry.
My son suggested rain with wings, I wasn’t so sure about this theme for myself, but he really dove into that idea. Here is his rendition of winged rain.
I had mentioned seeing a beautiful scene of dark rain clouds juxtaposed against the spring green of our poplar trees. Ever the Rothko fan, my husband suggested a color field of green and dark grey. I have learned to appreciate Rothko over the last 12 years of our marriage, but I didn’t want to copy (which I know is something that all artists do to learn about their style and technique). I wanted to put my own spin on the color field idea. (Another interesting color field artist to check out is Blinky Palermo, a German artist who put bought lengths of fabric on stretchers. I saw his work at a MOMA color exhibit recently.)

I warped my loom, and decided the piece would be 4 inches high by as long as I could get it on my loom, which is an Archie Brennan lap loom. It turned out 9 inches was about what it could do. I selected a couple of spring greens of Silk and Ivory by Brown Paper Packages, and then a range of greys. I started weaving (after some time spent warping the loom and readying the warp with selvedge and thread). I looked out our window and drew a tree line, and then wove in the grey. I had a color study but no rain. I decided to put the rain in with glass beads, so I sewed those on with clear thread, and I finished the top selvedge last night and cut it from the loom. So here are the results. Looking at the photo, I still need to do a little more work with the beading, and then I have to figure out how to mount it. Any ideas? Now I need to get back to work on my sandpail project, which by the way, I have started weaving.

I have no idea how I will mount this piece. Then, in the last few days as we have been taking little fun trips with our kids, I have been looking at the sky and the tree line at different times of day and have decided to do a series of these tapestries. We'll see how they turn out.

Finally ready to weave...

I have finally finished my cartoon on vellum so that I am happy with it and I am finally ready to weave. I have been working on this idea for months. I thought I could just sketch something and be ready to go. It has been a real learning experience for me to find out that to get ready to weave would take so long. I found my first drawing had no depth and the shadows on the pail were not very realistic. After spending an afternoon outside in the afternoon light, and then two days off and on coloring on my vellum, I am finally happy with my drawing. I finished weaving my selvedge this morning, and I hope to start weaving today or tomorrow.

I should have ridden today, but it is very windy here. It is really hard to ride on a very windy day. The horses are likely to be spooky and not really willing to pay attention to you. I had a riding lesson with Mike Shaffer last week. It was an interesting experience. He had me start working with Oliver in a small circle and to have him walk and trot in a small circle. Mike is like the horse whisperer of the dressage world. He believes that you can’t put a frame on a horse and move them into the bit, but that you need to let the horse discover that frame themselves by carrying you in a small circle and help them to find where their head should be carried, then let them move their heads around. Then, bring their frame back to the correct head carriage, and then let them go, so that it is a fairly quick process. The horses quickly discover that the collected mode in which you want them to go is the most comfortable for them. It does mean that you have to start with the basics and master them before moving on. Therefore it takes patience, but it is supposed to pay off with a happy horse that can quickly learn the upper movements of dressage quickly. I guess we’ll see. Now I need to get back to weaving…