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I knew I'd gotten behind on my blog posts, but I didn't realize just how far behind until I looked at my last one. Since that post I've finished both pieces that I referred to in it, finished another jacket and free lace scarf, and am well underway on another jacket. I guess I have some writing to do over the next few days.
February was the month for the joint show with my daughter, Sonja Lee-Austin, at the public library in Topsfield, Massachusetts. Our theme was Wabi Sabi ~ Marks of Time, Use, & Weather. It's a Japanese philosophy or way of life that encourages us to find beauty in things that are humble, time-worn, natural, and so on. It's hard to put into a few words, but much has been written about it. And we're finding that many other artists have been inspired by the concept.
Early on I knew that I wanted to do at least one piece for our show that incorporated the recycled sari ribbon that we've recently starting carrying in our shop. It is wonderfully colorful--made from torn strips of Indian sari fabrics chosen at random and held together by a bit of back-and-forth machine stitching. It took me a long time to decide just how I would use it, but the idea did not go away. Here are the two pieces that resulted from staring at the hank of ribbon for several months.
First is the jacket I call "Tattered Jewels." Squares and triangles of fabric created from the sari ribbon were reverse appliqued into the front back and sleeves. It is finished with collar and cuffs of a beautiful hand-dyed cotton sateen from my friend Judy Robertson. For the final touch I use some great hand-made triangular polymer clay buttons I found at the Quilt and Fiber Art Museum in Cedarburg, Wisconsin in January. (It's a delightful museum if you're in the area.)
Here's the jacket from the back:
After finishing the jacket, I still had leftover bits of the sari ribbon fabric I'd created. Needless to say I couldn't let them go to waste. These all went into a piece I called "Sari Ribbon Dance." I laid out the scraps on a background fabric and then went to town with embroider stitches and beading.
I know there are more sari ribbon projects in my future, but I don't know just what they'll be yet.
Earlier in the week I shared the start of my project using recycled sari ribbon. I created a piece of fabric by couching over the ribbons to attach them to a piece of silk organza. Over the last couple of days I've cut that piece of fabric up to use it in reverse applique in a jacket. Here's the beginning of that jacket.
The squares and triangles will float down the front, back and sleeves of the jacket. I'll be doing more couching to tie things together, but I haven't made a final decision on that design yet.
When I started working on the fabric, I knew that I also wanted to do something with the ribbon in a wall piece as well. My initial thought was to follow the same process for creating the fabric, but doing hand embroidery instead of machine couching. As I began to gather the scraps from the jacket piecing, I realized I needed to do something creative with them as well. They were too beautiful to discard, but too small to use on their own. I started laying them out on a background fabric to see if I could get a pleasing design. Here are a couple of my "test" pieces.
I'm not sure where I'm going from here, but I know it will involve hand embroidery - and likely something more. I know it will get tweaked along the way.
I've had a hank of recycled sari ribbon hanging from a hook on the wall of our studio for months now. As soon as we started carrying it in our web store, I knew I wanted to work with it. I had no idea what I would do with it. I just loved the vibrant colors. With all its frayed edges and the overall look of haphazardness, it seemed just perfect for our Wabi Sabi-themed show.
For months it has called my name, without telling me what to do with it. A friend crocheted it into fantastic coiled bowls. I love her bowls, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. I tried braiding it, but my braids disguised the frayed edges, transforming the wonderful messiness of it into something neat and somehow insipid. I tried weaving it, but it came out sort of checker-boardy. Again ho-hum.
Finally in the last couple of days I think I have found a way to use it that fits my vision and the wabi sabi concept. Here's my beginning:
I pinned the ribbon to a length of silk organza, folding it back and forth to cover the base. I took the colors just as they came; I didn't try to rearrange them at all. I didn't iron the ribbon before putting it down, I left it wrinkly. I tamed the wrinkles just enough to be sure that I covered the organza and that I could stitch over it. Then I started couching a thin fringed yarn over the ribbons in a wavy pattern. I worked in sections, putting in just enough stitching to hold the ribbon to the base without any pins. Then I ironed the whole thing to flatten down the wrinkles and continued adding wavy lines of couching till everything was secure.
When I first got going I wasn't sure that the result was going to be worth the effort. By the time I finished the first section, I liked it just enough to keep going. The second section was much easier due to the fact that I placed the pins lengthwise in the ribbons, not crosswise. It made it SO much easier to remove the pins as I sewed and I was still able to control the wrinkles the way I wanted to. By the time I finished stitching the section shown in my photo, I was happy and starting to think about another similar piece.
I think this one is destined for one of my jackets - perhaps cut in strips and inset somewhere. Then I think I'll do another similar piece but stitch down the ribbons by hand using a variety of embroidery stitches and fancy threads. I think that will be a wall piece. Stay tuned, there will be more to come...
One of my father's favorite sayings was "you learn something new every day." A typical dinnertime conversation consisted of his asking us in turn what new thing we had learned that day. Often we had to struggle to come up with something, but usually we could think of something. I reinforced the idea that learning was important and enjoyable - an idea that stays with me to this day.
With my latest free lace scarf, I learned that I should test the strength of all the threads and ribbons that I use. I've made many of these and never had any trouble with thread breakage, but with this last one I did. Not much, but enough that I couldn't ignore it.
The thread that broke was a decorative element, not structural so it wasn't necessarily a fatal flaw. But I liked what it added so I didn't want to just cut it out. I'd spent too much in time and materials on the scarf to just junk it, plus I really liked it. I'd had fun working with colors outside my usual set. What to do??? No ideas immediately came to mind.
I set it aside, tried not to think about it, and proceeded with all the other things I needed to do yesterday. Late in the afternoon a friend came by my studio and noticed it sitting on my table. I showed it to her, bemoaned the thread breaking problem, and set it aside again. Luckily though, showing it to Laura must have triggered something in the back of my mind because just after she left I had an idea for fixing it.
Here's the detail shot so you can see what I did.
I added in little "fringes" all over it. The fringes anchor the broken places as well as adding another decorative element.
The whole thing reinforces one of my favorite art-related sayings - "no mistakes, only opportunities."
As I was laying out ribbons for another Free Lace scarf, I began musing about how differently people perceive various (art) projects as quick (and easy) or slow (and tedious). I began thinking about this because these scarves feel very quick to me--I have finished two already this week and am starting a third. And yet I spend literally hours very carefully laying out the ribbons to make a pleasing pattern. If they ever watched me as I do this, many people would say the process is very slow and think it tedious and boring. Yet because I usually work on jackets and feel very productive if I finish two in a month, these scarves feel very fast to me. One more example in life, of "it's all relative."
Here's a picture of the scarf that I just finished. This is another one that was inspired by one of my jackets--specifically the thread couching pattern I used on it.
As I said it took me hours to lay out the ribbons to make all those box patterns, but to me it was far from tedious or boring. I loved watching the pattern grow and seeing the interplay of the colors. Working on something like this really helps me to live in the present moment, paying attention to and deriving joy from the details. So this part of laying out the pattern and then doing the stitching to hold everything together is the calming, meditative part of the project.
The "rush" comes when I wash away the stabilizer to see the completed scarf, and again when I put it together with the jacket that inspired it. Here's the combination for this scarf.
I was happy enough that I decided to make another one something like it - but I'm trying triangles this time - and very different colors.
It's gray, gloomy and cold outside, but I'm inside where it's warm and I'm having fun playing with color and texture. As soon as I finished one Free Lace scarf I started on another.
Here's the one I just finished. As I mentioned in my last posting, this one was inspired by the jacket I finished most recently.
I incorporated small squares of hand-dyed silk charmeuse in colors that picked up the colors of the jacket and used some of the same slub yarn that I had couched onto the jacket. I cut the silk with a wavy edge rotary cutter so the edges will fray a little but not totally. When I washed out the stabilizer the threads shrink up a little giving the silk squares a bit of a scrunchy look.
Here's the full effect with the jacket. What do you think??
My week is off to such a lovely start, I just had to share...
I got to the studio this morning about 9, after a refreshing water fitness class at the local Y. By about 10, the sun had come out and burned away the clouds. It is now streaming through the windows here in my studios, warming it up so nicely I have taken off the bulky sweater I was wearing over my turtleneck. Glenn has Gregorian chant music playing in his studio across the hall which seems the perfect accompaniment to the undulating lines I've been stitching on a free lace scarf. It gives me such a nice content feeling...
My plan is to create several new free lace scarves this month to put in the Winter Lights V show at The Loading Dock Gallery later this month. The scarf I'm working on now is designed to coordinate with the jacket I finished most recently.
I call this one Celebration because I was working on it when I found out that I was a fully qualified juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen. It uses a combination of a bluish purple linen-like fabric and a cotton with a batik-type pattern. (The fabrics were someone else's cast-offs, so I can't be sure of the composition.) The bluish purple has a lovely sheen to it. I think it might be a linen and silk blend. I have embellished the cotton by couching over it with a variegated slub yarn. I have used that same yarn in the free lace scarf. I'll let you know how it looks when I'm all finished.
