Festival of the Arts 2013 Plainsboro

Yesterday was the annual Festival of the Arts of Plainsboro, complete with visual arts displayed on clotheslines, waving in the wind!  weaving indoors on the giant Earthloom, Chinese knotting, stitching -- the Embroiderers' Guild put up a display and works in progress, and several members took care of the stitching requirements of visitors -- music of all kinds, including symphonic, chalked mandala, indoor gallery exhibit of found object art, outdoor musical instruments from found objects, food, jewelry, fingerpainting, Chinese painting and calligraphy, Indian henna handpainting,you name it, it probably was there!  all ages and species -- a couple of nice dogs being petted endlessly --  taking part happily, great atmosphere.

I got a nice Community Award, which involved flowers, pix, highly flattering descriptions, and I felt quite famous for a bit there.

Great props to library Director Carol Q, event coordinator and gallery curator Donna S, and cow-toting country girl Julie D, who in real life is the children's librarian.  They are the kind of professionals who make a huge event look like a spontaneous eruption of art and joy, while staying totally calm and on top of it all.  While paddling furiously under the water!

I'll just give you a rapid tour, and you'll see the loom in various stages. The small helpers organizing the red thread were there before opening time, and helped me cut and count the leashes you see traveling up the sides of the weaving as it progresses. Then everyone, including the Deputy Mayor, tried their hands.  I was very happy when I observed several times one youngster teaching another, and bringing their friends to join in.

The loom was mobbed all afternoon, with people working on several different areas at once, ending with the final weaver beside the almost completed weaving, at closing time.  

I need only add the top few rows of stabilizing stitches before the saori weaving, which consists of plarn -- plastic yarn created from shopping bags -- and scraps of fabric and regular yarns,  is a complete artwork ready for mounting permanently in the children's department.  It's about art and recycling!

More adventures for me in the next few months with this loom, about which more later...

New blog for lovers of embroidery

My embroidery guild asked me to set up a blog for our chapter's doings, and if you'd like to go here: http://princetonega.blogspot.com/

you can be in on the ground floor with our first ever blogpost.  It's set up so you can follow by entering your email under the header and following the, pretty simple, prompts.

I'll be putting up pix of our events, works in progress, whatever's up in this dynamic group!  and we'd welcome your comments.  I've set up comment moderation but not those annoying captcha letters.

I'll still be working busily in here, with my own blog, though, not going anywhere!

Old fashioned rose under way now

The big generous rose I drew is now developing into an embroidery.  I'm using half a dozen shades of red including one which shades to pink and back.  Probably none of these will photograph true, you know how cameras are red-shy, but anyway, here's the start, on sage green linen (same color as I used before on a goldwork piece earlier), using techniques of filling in and split stitch and things I've never done before.  It's interesting. But now I need to stop and rest my eyes.

I should probably explain that I'm not trying to reproduce the drawing in stitches.  I'm doing what the threads want to do, which is different from what the pen wanted.  It's the same subject, but a different approach.

The World of Textiles, Cleveland style

I was a guest at the Princeton Rug Society meeting this afternoon, for a power point presentation of images from the textile collection of the Cleveland (Ohio, that is) Museum of Art, created by the member who was just there and spent the day seeking out textiles from the galleries of the museum.  They are interspersed with other artworks, so it was a lot of footwork for her.  Not very practical to take pix of her images, since the flash would be disturbing to the other people, so I'll just aim you here  and suggest you browse a while.  

Great collection, and though a lot of the textiles don't have images, those that do will enlarge if you click, and bring up information about the materials, size, provenance of the piece.

Then the members present had a show and tell of their own pieces, with great expertise on what they are, and generosity in letting people handle items such as a Quebecois child's coat, 19th century, another Canadian piece, a fingerwoven sash made by monks with  amazing fineness of detail, batiks, goldworked and silk woven pieces,

and a section of Asian embroidery for use in women's clothes, an export to the west.  The round piece is backed with Russian trade goods fabric, so you see it back and front.


Although the society is officially about rugs, in fact the membership is interested and knowledgeable in many textile forms, and they collect a wide range of them. As a goldwork embroiderer, if a learner, I was interested in the goldwork on some of the slides and in person, and noticed that there was reverse couching on one goldworked piece, very finely done. 

Great afternoon for textile lovers, and, since the meeting was in the same library as the needlework exhibit I'm taking part in, I happily referred them to that on their way out.   I took pix of our Guild's needlework show, and will be setting them up in then inaugural blogpost of Princeton Embroiderers Guild, our new blog for guild news.  I'll give you a link when that's up and running.

The Pairs Project goes on!

I found some promising drawings for transformation into needlework while I was looking out art to display at next week's Festival of the Arts, serendipitous finds, and picked one, which had great significance at the time I drew it in a journal.  

The page, trimmed out but keeping the wording as well as the flower drawing, is one of the pair,and I translated it across to a blocked out image on sage green linen for a bit more goldwork and other things, too.

Art is bustin' out all over, what with the stitchery exhibit I am taking part in and which I'll pic for the embroiderers' blog (and give a link in Art the Beautiful, if I like my results, so you can see what our entire group is up to), and the Festival, at which I'm seeing to the earth loom using plarn, and being a presence there with the embroiderers, as well as having a clothesline exhibit of art outside,along with other artists from our association,from tree to tree!  and there's a ceremony in the middle of it all, in the middle of which I have to be.

Meanwhile, back in a calmer space, here's the current pair.

The Embroiderers strut their stuff

The monthly general meeting of the embroiderers' guild was all about show and tell, with projects completed, projects under way and a lot of sharing about how they were done and why -- a lot of family history is involved in stitching.

The artworks covered two full tables -- and this was in addition to those which are already out in an exhibit, pix of that soon, and a number of us came away with new ideas for yet more projects.  Yeah!  I'm now all about adding to the goldwork and dyed silk with another refinement on that, which I'll get into and show you if any results happen to emerge!  for the source of my excitement, scroll down to the picture of Ginny holding an exquisitge painting/stitching of iris.

Some lovely works under glass didn't make it into this post, likewise a beautiful white on white monogram display, and the white Mountmellick piece you see above is off color in here, in my attempts to make it visible at all! the lighting was a bit indoorish!  but you get the gist.  It was wonderful.  What a talented group, if I may say so...

This may be the last time the embroiderers are covered in Art the Beautiful Metaphor, since I'm on the brink of creating a new blog just for the EGA chapter, and when it's open, I'll let you all know where to find it!  It will be largely pictures of us at work and play and us on our exhibits and trips. Watch this space!

Art the Beautiful will resume its usual headlong dash through my own work, though, so don't go away, folks, there's more in here, too.

Cherry Ripe! and the beads go on..

I was given some seed beads recently, perfect timing, that were exactly what I needed for the cherry motifs in this piece, so I had a lot of fun, with the assistance of two cats, transferring these minute glass items from a pop-open container (label says open with care, well, yeah) into a little bag, for easier pickup with my needle. Once again I found some of them with my bare feet on the wood floor.

Anyway, the fruiting of the tree is under way, and I love the way beads literally add weight to the piece.  Liking this a lot, and I'll be sorry when it's done.

It looks as if a wild cherry tree is trying to emerge

As I started work on the piece, the shapes began to emerge more clearly and it looks as if a wild cherry tree wants to appear here. So I've couched the trunk and a couple of branches in goldwork, and I'll do more of the fruit and leaves you see here, as I go. 

This is definitely a design as you go piece,and I like very much the gnarled effect I got by crossing the gold thread here and there, instead of having it parallel like a flow of water,not right for this context.

I've been studying embroidery on my Kindle, and now fancy a bit of vining around the trunk,maybe in a green, we'll see.  All kinds of ideas are coming at me.

Now for something completely different..

Different from rusty metal, anyway.  Here's my latest setup, tape binding the hoop courtesy of Judy T., whose Big Box of Stitching Delights is being shared around here and there.  You need to bind a hoop if you're going to use something as fragile as silk, though some people always do it, to avoid a permanent ring on the fabric.  I think it can be pressed out or stretched out, so I'm not so conscientious about that.  It takes a lot of seam binding to do a hoop, and nowadays it's expensive, so The Box was very handy to go to.

But here, with a piece of unbleached muslin backing one layer of silk organza and one layer of silk chiffon, with  images printed on both from two of my Tyvek paintings, it's an issue.  

Can't tell you how long I fiddled at this to get all the pieces of fabric in the right orientation to each other, and in the hoop, and happy together,with the images falling on one another the way I wanted.

Next I have to figure out how to work on this.  Must study ideas.
And right there on the patio in the sunshine, wild cherries on my doughty cherry tree, what's left of her after Irene and Sandy, still blooming away for the birds.  I got a bit carried away thinking about the designs they suggest.

The other shoe drops!

Here's the companion piece to the embroidered sunflower piece! It's from several years ago, when I was deep into black gesso and copper wire and metals of all kinds.   

 

Quite small, it's the top of a wooden cigar box, upturned, covered with black gesso, and with a sawblade I found in the street, natural twigs and a piece of shiny paper for the center,  attached with copper wire, and with a copper ink drawing, creating a sunflower.  Quite a contrast in approach from the stitched and dyed piece.  Thought you'd enjoy seeing this.

This and the embroidered and dyed sunflower will appear together.

The Sunflower is done. and so's the stitcher

Here's the sunflower on silk piece, unframed, still with the basting around the edges, out of the picture, securing the cotton lawn to the silk,and still with the indentation of the hoop, before it was stretched

and here, stretched and  in a box frame, which is transparent on the sides, too, so you see the wraparound effect of the silk. 

 

This is probably how it will be framed permanently.  I need to put a backing on after I'm sure I like the positioning, which actually looks okay to me. 

It's on the wall, so I can see it better and decide if any adjustments are asking to be made.  Interesting to see that the eastern light shows up blues and purples, and the western light, evening pic, shows up the reds!  this is actually truer to the dyes.
This was great fun, wonderful mixture of working with silk, using metallic threads and beads and floss, and various stitches.

Now that moment of anxiety sets in, wondering what comes next...

The Dollivers Send in the Plarn Troops

Two brave Dollivers were volunteered by their peers to come cut up plastic bags to create plastic yarn aka plarn. 

Here they are wielding scissors with enthusiasm.  Note the broomhandles, I mean knitting needles, in that pic,too. Then we cast on about eight giant stitches and proceeded to knit garter stitch for a few rows before exhaustion overtook their yarny arms.

Closeup of their feat.  It takes a lot of room to do this kind of knitting, what with swinging the needles around.  I think it's more of a spectator sport for the Festival, than an actual participatory one...I can see it now, people being swept off their feet by the knitter changing rows.

Elton the musician commented that this reminded him of those Swiss horn players in the mountains.


But, as you see, there's practically nothing you can't knit with.  And no idea that's too far out to consider for our Festival.

Meanwhile, there's Plarn!

Out in the world of larger art, we're getting ready for the September 20th Plainsboro Festival of the Arts, which I helped found about 18 years ago, and which has grown and grown, so I guess it's partly my fault...

One thing I'll be doing this year, aside from helping to person the embroiderers' guild area, is to work the Earthloom, a giant affair, for community participation, since that's the name of the festival doings.

So I thought hm, recycling and having fun and making a 21st century tapestry, hm, plarn is called for.  This is yarn created from cutting up plastic bags of all colors.  The art curator, Donna S., was unfamiliar with it, but courteously refrained from rolling her eyes, and we got together this afternoon, scissors and bags at the ready, and cut a few samples to put onto the ready warped loom. 

I packed down a previous iteration of weaving, as a nice base for the upcoming one, and did a sample weaving.  The yellow strip you see is the results of one grocery bag cut up.  And I've started putting leashes on, you see them at the sides, to keep the work rectangular as it progresses.

And here's Donna busily, and gallantly,  producing more plarn, with supplies of bags in the foreground. This is someone who is running a lot of major programs, all at once, while moving house, and getting offspring back to college.  A halo ought by rights to appear in this pic.

I also broke it to her today that you can knit with this stuff, and I have an idea about making a performance art piece using broomsticks for knitting needles and having several people knit!  I'll create the plarn, find the broomsticks and cast on a few stitches for starters, and we'll go from there.  I'm just sayin'.  


So the Festival will be a heavily fibrous day for some of us.   I will be indoors, since I can't manage to be out in the weather all afternoon.  But the loom will be in a window visible from the plaza outside so people can join us at will.  The event goes on all over the place, indoors and out, all the time.

And looking ahead a bit, there's loose talk about an Artist in Residence, that would be me, probably in the winter, creating a big tapestry of my own on this loom with people able to stop by and chat and ask and all that. Not using plarn, though, probably my own hand spun chunky yarn.
Fun abounds. Not much danger of boredom, I'd say.
 

The Sunflower bursts out

Here's the current State of the Sunflower piece. It's become a piece about late summer fruits and flowers -- the dark little areas are seed beads and resemble fruit -- and I'm rethinking trapunto in favor of more couching, because there are going to be competing textures if I use trapunto. So I'll save that for another piece.

I pictured the piece straight on, and at an angle so that you can see the textures better.  The stitching that looks like chain isn't -- it's split stitch, using four strands of floss so that I could split each stitch evenly.  Lot of fun, doing that.  And the long and short on the petals is different each time, since petals are, too.

This is nearing the finish line, I think.

the silk design starts to emerge

This is an exciting point, where the design idea starts to express itself.  Several ideas came together this afternoon and I realized that the center of this piece is going to be a sunflower head. This was after a while spent couching dark green and anchoring it with yellow, my subconscious at work, I guess.

 I drew a couple of them as design references, from my flowers growing out front and back, and will be penciling the design onto the silk -- can't use my favorite Pilot pen for this, since it will probably bleed -- and then that's where the trapunto will happen, and some beading. And maybe some French knots to simulate beads and seeds in the seed head.  We'll see.  

The full face sunflower is probably my choice for this work, the other, more shaggy one, a back view of an older flower, is a bit "busy" for this piece,but might frame up as a nice little drawing.


Techy stuff for people who like it:  drawing paper, lightweight, fine black Pilot pen, Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons to sketch in the color areas.

And there'll be beading here and there elsewhere, and some small trapunto areas, to balance out the design.  At least that's the current plan.

Silk piece under way

I've made a start on my dyed silk piece here.  I basted a cotton lawn piece behind it before I hooped it, so that I could couch onto the silk without overwhelming it with weight, and it's really a good feeling to work through the two layers.  

Here I've established the basic contours of the piece, partly following the dyed shapes, partly departing from them, in couching with gold thread, and a kind of shiny translucent thread and floss,and a lot more will happen before it gets away from here. 

 I'm thinking of beading (why are you not surprised) and some trapunto work, but not in the same areas.  Adding in the cotton backing is what makes the trapunto possible, so I'm capitalizing on it.

About the colors: these are not my favorite part of the spectrum, but I dyed pieces when I taught the silk workshop to appeal to all tastes since we had about 15 different people attending.  This one wasn't chosen, and it's good to depart from your favorite colors now and then and see what happens.  Art's not about doing the same old thing and expecting different results!

I've been dying to get to this piece, but I have a neurotic need to finish things as I go, so I had to do all the other projects that had priority for various reasons.

You'll notice I've added a badge to this blog (I will have to redo it in a less explosive color, but it looked calmer at the site of origin) and have been having a great time with responses and discussion of all these embroidered bits over there, with much encouragement from highly decorated embroiderers, including goldworkers.  But I will be faithfully in here, too, never fear.  

Oh, nearly forgot: that piece with the pearls and couching and all sorts of items that I couldn't figure out how to name?  I was thinking it was like the inside of a geode, but that would be a dorky title.  Well, Faye, one of my new friends over at Stitchinfingers suggested Tide Pool! Yes!! just right.

The Phoenix flies off northward and the next project is in sight

The Phoenix Rising book is now complete and packed ready to take flight northwest.  I attached the needlepoint with a margin of canvas colored, to a book cover I made of mulberry paper over card stock.  It's saddle stitched, with two signatures inside, easily detached if she wants to, and easy to replace if she wants to do that, too. 

And if she decides she wants to frame the cover rather than use it as a book, it's hers and she can do that too!The red yarn stitching you see on the outside cover is part of a yarn gift she made me ages ago, and I thought she'd like to have a souvenir of that lovely present.

So this is a participatory gift in several ways!

Then the next piece, a dyed silk one, which I'm backing with cotton lawn because I want to use metallic thread and the silk is too fine to support it alone. I've hooped it on a ten inch hoop, and I'll probably baste the two materials together to keep them from drifting as I work.  This is one of the series of silk pieces I dyed for my embroidery class to work on.

 

I'm looking at a design from a card embroiderer friend Carol P. showed me after a recent trip to Europe, showing a detail from an old Venetian coronation robe, as a wonderful example of goldwork stitching.

This is where I'm at right now.

A little commission

This new pocket doll was commissioned by a Ravelry friend, and the planets came into the right configuration, meaning I found the pattern, years since I made any of these, found the yarn, found the right tiny needles, and found a piece of time.  So here he is.

Marigold is deeply suspicious of this whole enterprise since it involved being shoved off my lap several times while I was working on it.  She came in useful to show his relative size, though.

The Dollivers lent their rocker for the photo opp, on condition that the doll leaves soon, but they are consoled that he won't be getting any of their special gear, since he comes fully dressed. 

The Shell has Landed

The future owner of this piece came visiting about five minutes after I got home, after a day out you can read about here and turns out she's in for surgery this week, is in a lot of pain, so without further ado, I gave her the beaded piece I made for her, instead of waiting to show it to embroidery buds.  She really needed it, got all teary, and loved it.  So I think it served its purpose!

Anyway, this is how it was just before she seized it and ran home with it.She wants to get it framed, no need for me to do it.

Midst Shot and Shell

Well, seashell in fact.  I'm beading and goldworking this little shell and would like a bit of input from you embroidering blogistas.  You see the section across the top which in an actual shell would be a sort of lip? I think of beading in there, too.  Or would you leave it open?  I've been looking at this for hours and have lost the ability to see it properly, you know how that goes.  So please chime in with your advice, which will be greatly appreciated and maybe even listened to!

The colors didn't come out true:  that upper section which looks like white beading, is in fact lovely pink beads with a white cast on them, very like the interior of one of these shells, and the fabric is a piece of tobacco brown linen or maybe rayon, or moygashel or something, nice to work through, but frays a bit, because I was so excited about getting into it that I forgot to tape the edges.

The other beads are taken from the necklace I thrifted the other day, nice range of browns and ambers and mixed, and the blue ones at the bottom I bought ages ago as beads, amazing, at retail.

This is a small piece, maybe 4 x 4 total.  It's probably going to be a gift to the person who gave me a ton of kits recently after she was searching for her blender, remember that funny sequence?  This was one of the kits, except it was supposed to be crewel, but I thought beads and goldwork would be better for the subject. 

The Phoenix has finished rising.

 

Subtitle: But Wait, there's More!

This approx 4 x 4 canvas, 24 count,executed in three strands of floss, with all the background in various mixtures of threads, I love to mix  colors with a needle, is now waiting for its final home. The phoenix itself was taken from a Monica Ferris chart, but the background is my own  design. It's a collaborative piece.

I think this is going to be on the cover of an artist's book, very special gig, special person.  But as to how it will look, how the book is to be constructed, well, I'm working on that.

New Book, Destination Undisclosed

The recipient doesn't know this is on its way, but I thought it would be good to show it before it leaves me.

It's an artist's book, the cover unbleached muslin, painted, cut and quilted together, with drawings, the inside cover mulberry paper, a double signature inside, saddle stitched, but you can easily remove the sections to put in more pages if wanted.  Handmade beads from my own paper, wax finished.

Since the recipient's a poet, I'm hoping this will fit her current requirements...and that she won't send me a rejection slip.