Artist in Residence Week Nine AIR 2016 WIPS

Last week of the current series of Artist in Residence sessions, and it was definitely worth doing.  A lot of good conversation, ideas for people to take away, many interesting questions, and the opportunity for me to show many forms of textile arts, all accessible without much equipment or expenditure.

Today it was Works in Progress, and I brought in several works in progress, three or four of them barely designed, and ready for me to do designs on them, one under way, one almost completed.  In between chatting about art, design, higher education, the political scene, literature and various other topics that came up as the afternoon went on, that is.

As usual, I brought a box of materials, threads of all kinds, plus reference books. Since today's emphasis was on design and working on it, the book of drawings is one of the best places a designer can start, both to study and to draw, to get your eye and hand in.  Then the book of geological photographs, natural shapes and forms, wonderful ideas.  And my own looseleaf notebook of drawings, most of them done not as ideas but as fully developed drawing.

And for color, nothing beats the sheer intelligence of Albers.  He was the twentieth century master, taught at Black Mountain College many other artists, composers and wild talents.  One of his students, Maggi Johnson, was my mentor until her death in her mid nineties last year.  So I have an unbroken succession to one of the greats! well, two of them, in fact.
 
I found a wonderful motif on Twitter the other day, one of those stylized initial letters in illuminated medieval manuscripts.  So I swiped the shape as a design element, repeated it five times, meeting in the middle, to form a kind of mandala effect, on a piece of dyed linen, and will stitch into that.  Maybe with silver, maybe gold, maybe colors, maybe all of the above.

The series of graduated hoops I'd set up with dyed silk will probably not be drawn on again, though I did break down and draw a rose motif on the smallest one.  The silk and muslin and linen all started life as plain white, and I dyed and printed and generally made changes on them as a support for stitching.

Then I started the printed piece, a formless sort of group of metallic imprints I'd put on muslin, and began to form a mountain landscape, drawing from shape to shape and starting to couch copper metallic thread onto the contours. There will be an indigo metallic in what is to be the horizon line of the mountain range.

These will all be either framed or dowelled wall hanging pieces.

I learned quite a bit in the course of this residence, one being to stay calm in public long enough to stitch peacefully and to concentrate on designing.  Before this I would have had to be at home to design happily. 

But now I feel as if I can do it anywhere! this bodes well for the good weather, if we ever get any.  I can definitely see working out of doors.  The light is very favorable from now on, too. Plein air stitching!

And all this is leading up to the June exhibit, for which I hope to have enough work to make a show.  The title of the exhibit: Leap and the Net Will Appear! and the next few weeks will feature quite a bit of leaping!

Onions!

Just an amused post about how frugality gets everywhere.  

A simple bag of onions on sale has yielded plenty of onions in the freezer, a bag of skins in the dyebag, a poem, and a line drawing.  You can read the poem here
  
The line drawing is a pilot pen one on hot press paper, and now I want to do more

 I'd say those onions don't owe me anything. Talk about freighted.

Artist in Residence, AIR 2016, last week, WIPS

This week is the last of the AIR series, and though I initially thought I might just bring out what I planned for last week, I've decided it would be interesting instead to bring out WIPS, works in progress, some planned, some designed, some under way, as an insight into the ongoing work of a person like me.

So here's the picture of what will happen.  I've hooped up a series of silk pieces in graduated sizes, all steam-dyed using leaves and flowers, and a piece of linen, dyed likewise, plus a piece of cotton, printed with metallic acrylic paint. 

None of these is stitched yet, so I will be drawing designs on them, or possibly following the lines created by the dyes.  They tend to look like landscapes, so choosing where to hoop was part of the design process.

And there will be threads, and silk blanks to see the starting point of the dyed pieces. The blanks just arrived today, very timely. I put out gold threads for this photo, but I might work the graduated series using silver.  We'll see.

That will be IT for the series! And I think it's been worth while all around. 

On Saturday, our stitching guild has a joint program with the Historical Society of Princeton in a historic farmhouse, where a few of us will be stitching in public for the afternoon and demonstrating, and I think this series plus silver threads, will be among the items I take with me.  If they let me do pix there, I will share the event with you.

Score: virus 1, Boud 0 more or less, but one thing got finished

This week has been quiet on the art front, and more exciting than I like on the health side.  A gut virus felled me on Sunday, and I am still not acquainted with solid food, but I think it's abating now, leaving total tiredness. Anyway, that's why there's no AIR session this afternoon, sorry, but I will be back next week.  The libe staff is all aware and will explain if anyone is looking and asking.

The only small thing I've been able to accomplish is, once the parts for the floor embroidery frame arrived, to complete the assembly, and install a sample piece of dyed linen on it, just to show how it works.  The clamps which grip the fabric are great, easy to tighten by turning them to the back of the frame.

If you downloaded the pdf you will have seen that it calls for four two inch segments of half inch pvc piping, for a table model.  In order to adapt that to a floor model, I substituted two 25 inch pieces, to raise it up to the level I need.  Incidentally, if you are concerned about the originator of the plans, she does suggest various adaptations, and I doubt she'd object to this one.

The photograph distorts the relative size of the top and the base -- they're much nearer in size than they appear here.  And I'm pleased with the result, pretty sturdy, lightweight, and can be taken apart and put together easily.

I am going to dye some silk pieces, once they arrive, the way I did the last dye lot, and I'll be able to use my new frame to stitch on them.  Very pleased with all this.

Eco dyeing, or what I did while I was waiting for parts to arrive

So yesterday I picked up the pvc pieces for the embroidery frame, but found that two items, the three way connectors and the clamps, were not available locally.  

So I sent away for them, and did all the cutting in the meantime and assembled the parts I can, except that the long piece needs to be cut into two parts, once I determine the exact height needed to raise the frame up to be a floor standing frame.  If you have downloaded the pdf of instructions, you'll see a place where you use two inch pieces to create the table top model. That's where I'm putting in much longer pieces, to raise it up as a floor standing frame. So here's where that project is:

It will be only a couple of minutes' work once the parts arrive, the three way and the clamps, then I'll show it.  Such a cool idea.

Soooo this left me Saturday evening, my Donna Leon current reading done, casting about for what to do...and I noticed a blog about eco dyeing, and thought, oh look, a bird..

This is not the kind I did last year where I extracted the dyes from plants then used them to dye fabric.  This is the other one, where you wrap actual plant material, tie and steam it.  Better if you have tin cans or metal pipes to wrap the fabric around, but I don't use much in the way of canned goods, and my pipe bits are pvc,  so I had to improvise. And rusty items, and I could only find one or two of these, rust not evidently being an issue around here. You need the rusty stuff, since the iron offshoot is a good mordant

So, it being late on Saturday night, and even I draw the line at foraging in the pitch dark, I went with indoor houseplant and veg material

Boston fern, begonia leaves, sanseveria and a handful of onionskins.  I soaked three fabric pieces, one linen, two silk, in a solution of one to four white vinegar to water, wrung it out,  then arranged plant material on the wet fabric, folded it over, 

then rolled and wrapped it tightly, using string. 

Then steamed it for two hours.  Then I left it overnight, and unwrapped it this morning 

and pressed the wet fabric to see what it had wrought.

One of the scarves had some silk dye already, but one was plain white, and the linen piece had pale turmeric dyes on it already.  So this also compared overdyeing with original dyeing.  And found it was all pretty much fun.  Once the frame is done, I can mount the linen square on it for stitching purposes.  Once the parts have arrived..it will all converge at some point.
 

AIR 2016 Week Seven Lemons and Lemonade

Here's the setup for AIR Week Seven, including beaded knitting which uses a crochet hook, stitching on net, and designing ideas.

We were up against a beautiful Spring day, which kept people away in droves, so, since few people got the benefit of this setup, I plan to repeat it next week.  That's the lemon part.

However, the lemonade part is that for the first time, I got to work during the session, not needing to stop and explain and show. So here's the lemonade, a finished phone purse, started as a demo. 

In fact it wasn't wasted, since I showed a couple of stitchers the crochet hook beading idea the evening before, at our meeting, and then a couple of neighbors who dropped in at home the evening after.


You will see that I now have three beaded phone purses.  They seem to fall in seasons, the latest one, in string and blue glass beads, being a summer idea, the white with the blue wooden beads and gold strap a winter one, and the dark rust with I think agates, or some such precious stone, and silver strap, a fall one.  This was not planned, but it occurred to me just now that it's what I seem to have done.

Since I plan to learn a bit of Ukrainian embroidery, and have a kit and instructions ready to go, and Ukrainian embroidery features flowers, perhaps I can stitch a Spring phone purse..all a bit quirky, but if some people, who shall remain nameless, create pillow covers for the season, well, I can do phone purses.  Neener!

And tomorrow I plan to shop for the piping and connectors to build myself a standing embroidery frame. The original wonderful plans, found on Magpie's blog, go here , are for a freestanding or tabletop frame. 

This link takes you to a nice post on Magpie's blog, always fun to read, and you will see the joke in the previous para as well as a link to the plans for the frame, created by Kathy Shaw, so you get a twofer.  Or a threefer, really.  I think Kathy deserves some sort of citation for this idea, and you will too, once you take a look at the plans.

I plan to adapt them to make a floor frame, and my stitching buds are eager to see how it comes out, after they saw the pvc niddy noddy in action!  They asked me for the link to the original ideas, which I sent, but I will show them my finished product, with any luck, soon.

And while I was musing about this, and thinking, what a pity, I seem to be weaving rather than stitching more than anything at the moment, that it struck me with a blow like a meteor to the head, that this can also be a weaving loom!  And it would be easy to remove the weaving at the end by sliding the members aside rather than cutting and tying the warp ends. Exactly like removing yarn from the niddy noddy.  And it's at an angle all the better to save my stiff neck.  Now I really can't wait to get on with this.

I can use up the rest of the piping left over from the niddy noddy, plus buy more piping (I guess it will be like the hot dogs and rolls, never coming out exactly even, there will always be leftover pipe), and various connectors.And I'll report back in due course.

Why the Artist in Residence notion is labor intensive!

The AIR 2016 is labor intensive partly because as gallery manager and general art director of the libe Donna rightly said, I decided to do it big, how typical of me, too true, and partly because I only include fiber arts in which I already have experience and have either exhibited or taught.

However, that's a range, and it means every week I usually have to refresh my knowledge and skill!  can't claim to show  something if I can't remember exactly how it goes, after all...

So this week, among other things, for Week Seven of nine, this is all your doing, Quinn, I'm refreshing my old skills with beaded knitting where you use a crochet hook to insert the beads.  It's mesmeric and you just don't want to stop once under way. 

I decided to embark on a new small piece, a phone purse, similar to a couple of others I'm bringing, just to demo the concept and to encourage visitors to try a small item for themselves at home.  I find new knitters tend to think in terms of large things like scarves and sweaters and can get a bit daunted when the finish line recedes like mountains in the distance.

And I'm using fine string and glass beads, a nice and unusual combo of materials. Another reminder that you can use anything you want as a yarn.

Anyway, now I have to hold back from finishing the thing too soon!  I need to have some left to show.  The pic here I took this morning, right after I got under way, but the item's nearly done now, oh dear. Note the extreme fineness of the hook -- the hook end is barely visible.  This is because you need a hook small enough to thread the bead onto it over the hook, and to draw it back out with two thicknesses of your yarn on it.  Which means you have to have beads with a bore (the hole in the middle) large enough to allow this.

In addition to this technique, I'll be showing books and ideas about doing your own designing, too, to encourage that, and will be showing a stitching on net still on the hoop, the design taken from my own drawing. 

The technique of using Vilene and net, which I might have invented, at least I never saw it anywhere,  is part of this, too.  A lot of textile arts are really not difficult, at least to embark on, but they seem mysterious until you see them happening.

Varied and interesting session, at least that's always the hope.

AIR Week Seven Thoughts, beaded knitting, lace embroidery and design

This week's musing, while I worked on a tapestry, about what to present for the seventh in the series of nine Artist in Residence sessions on the textile arts was given a jolt today by a tweet about crochet-hook beaded knitting.  Thanks so much, Quinn.  I've been thinking idly for a while about this and hadn't incorporated the idea into any plans.

So in addition to the elements of design and transfer, using Vilene and net, and other ideas, I'm putting in beaded knitting, using samples I use all the time.  

This is the technique where you use a tiny crochet hook to slide the bead onto the knitted stitch, as needed, rather than the counting and planning that the other form of beaded knitting requires.  Much more to the taste of a knitter who likes spontaneity.  That would be me.  

The crochet hook I found in a thrift store box of old sewing items, many of which I passed on to sewers, but the extremely small hooks I kept since they're not easy to find.  The hook is almost hard to see with the naked eye, that small.  There are YouTube videos of this technique, so I won't describe it here, but do try it.

So here are a couple of examples, both are phone purses, which I've made a lot of and given away a lot of, and which are great for a beginning knitter, small enough to finish and useful, too.  Adding the beaded element is fun for the next step.  The one on the right is a lovely calming piece to hold in your hand with beads between your fingers.  This was a discovery after I'd made it, and I'm very pleased with it.

The left one has a strap braided from an old piece of broad gold cording, while the strap on the right one is crocheted. Both go right down the sides of the purses, making them secure.

No pix yet of the Vilene ideas, not yet set up. It's all part of the Art is for Everyone approach!  you can, too, design your own, if you want to.  There will be a  net embroidery work in progress, based on my drawing, and I'll be bringing in other drawings which I have also used as design starters.  I didn't draw them for that purpose, but they lent themselves.

Aside from the AIR 2016 planning, I've made a little freeform tapestry, here seen off the loom, but not quite finished -- a couple of things need to happen before I declare it done. These are all threads I spun and dyed

 The trailing warp yarns are pretty long, and are part of the design of the piece.  I got them by warping right over the back of the (cardboard) loom rather than just up and down the front.Their ends need to be finished in some way so as to give them a bit more weight.  Title suggestions will be welcome for this piece.  It helps me see what other people see when they look.

This tapestry happened while I was thinking about another, completely different one. Art goes that way quite often.  But I'm going to take another run at the one I meant to make.

AIR 2016 Week Six Beadweaving and Beaded Embroidery

This week was all about beadweaving and beaded embroidery.  

 

Bottom right is entitled Anonymous Was a Woman

A small section of my bead holdings on the right there

Beaded bracelets and a tapestry in woven beads

I got two pieces back from an exhibit last evening, just in time to bring them out today. You see them on the table at the top -- ears of wheat, an old traditional motif, and Anonymous Was a Woman, using the anonymity icon from the internet, and subversive uneven framing in stitching.

And I started a beadweaving on my cardboard loom to demonstrate today, which I did.  Once you start a beadweaving, it's hard to stop. 

Sample beadweaving for demo

 
 Yesterday I had to review how to weave beads, and was glad I had, since it took me a try or two to get the hang of it back again.


Although the theme today was beadweaving and beaded embroidery, the conversations, with artists and other visitors, ranging from glass art to ceramics, to Turkish textile arts -- very interesting Turkish lady who has just retired and is thinking of taking up beading and other embroidering now  -- and a gift arrived of broken jewelry bits, some of them spectacular, from a visitor who had emailed me earlier and offered me the takings from her newly organized jewelry drawer.  Many orphan earrings!

Time flew as usual, and the works I brought in were handled and admired -- okay to handle beaded bracelets -- and I have a new flyer courtesy of Gallery Manager Donna, to give out about my upcoming exhibit.

All in all, this series is a Good Thing.Now I have some great ideas for using my new trove of jewelry bits in, I'm thinking, tapestry or possible as a form of shisha embroidery which I haven't tried yet. And there are crystal beads which I think I already have a home for.

AIR 2016 Week Six Beading and Beadweaving

Lovely stuff to show tomorrow -- beaded works, ref books for people who want to try their hand at it, beads, threading filament, and the makings of beadweaving.  Plus finished beadwoven bracelets, the only ones I have left, the others being sold or generally in collections out there. 

The clunky piece of cardboard in the pic is the loom on which those bracelets were made - no need for fancy looms to weave with beads.  They do exist and they're lovely, but I just never bothered. Likewise special beading needles, I just haven't got into them, have enough embroidery needles of all sizes to find ones that will work for the beads.

So I'll demo how to weave with beads, a bit of a mystery until you see how it's done -- and I will start a piece tomorrow so that people can see what I'm up to -- and I'll talk about using beads in embroidery.  The pieces I'm bringing are more embroidery than beads, to show how beads can be the feature but don't have to be the whole show.  And I have a piece in progress which is currently dyed and goldworked, but beads will feature in it, too.

If you're local, do come! this will be fun. And bring questions on all things embroidery and textiles.  And I will attempt to bring supplies of beads without dramatically dropping the lot as I did at home a while back, creating bead soup.

This AIR is really making me revisit a lot of interesting skills, and enjoy them all over again.  I particularly get a kick when people come and decide they'd like to try a skill, maybe even with their kids over the summer.  If visitors do half what they have in mind, their summer will be a madhouse of stitching, dyeing, beading, weaving, crocheting art and knitting it, too.  All good.

Tapestry Ocean, and Goldwork on printed, dyed linen

Today a completed work, a small tapestry, made from yarn I spun and dyed then wove, with a hanging dowel painted to look like metal. I wove this on a cardboard loom.

and a work in progress, goldwork on printed and dyed linen.  I think beading will get in here, too.

Next Thursday's artist in residence session will feature beading and possibly embroidery on lace.  I have to find beaded pieces to show, though the more spectacular ones are now in collections, and not available to me right now. And I have to paw through my books to find something on beading.  Not hard to find raw materials for beading! just a little tricky to transport without creating bead soup.

Hard to believe how fast these nine sessions are rushing by. Week Six now!