Yes, And Sample 1

In November and December I went about dyeing new rayon for a church commission that I have agreed to do this year. I did a lot of playing with colors and had a meeting that included putting skeins of yarn that I had dyed up against the wall that the weaving will hang on. We (the committee at the church for this honorarium and I) agreed that saturated colors looked really wonderful and so I set about winding a warp and dressing Beatrice. 

Drafting the way I wanted to warp for this double weave pickup became an obsession. I was rolling it around in my head and sometimes waking up in the middle of the night thinking about what I needed to do to make it work.  This piece is the first where I have one warp threaded as plain weave (which is normal) and the second warp prepared for a twill weave option. The colored layer is plain weave with a striped color warp and the black is twill.  I thought it would be nice to make the more textured fabric in black and it's absolutely wonderful in person. 

One of the things about weaving something that's been in your head can be that you hope it works out in some sort of interesting if not exciting and perfect way, but it can end up being a flop. I was ready, I didn't have my hopes too high, I knew I'd probably have to go in and fix threading errors that would pop up and drive me nuts, or the 2 fabric structures wouldn't play nice together or...something.  It's a miracle. No threading errors and as I started to weave the design it just...worked. I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop on this but it's not, it's just perfect. 

I started with an 8 x 10 of the actual cartoon that I'm working on. The 32 in x 48 in cartoon is just being finalized and working a narrow section of  it gives me a good idea of how the spacing and font sizing is going to look.  After weaving one small portion of the warp (in case I couldn't find the time after a stint of multiple days off in a row) I decided that I wanted to have a long strip to weave and move from one color weft idea to the next. So I printed a 10 x 48 strip of cartoon to work with next. I didn't do too long of a warp because I knew I might want or need to change it up and I didn't want to get stuck with feeling like I had to weave all of it. I think its safe to say that most of us weavers hate to waste warp. So this warp ended up with a 10 x 8 sample and a 10 x 25 sample.

In the above photo I also have a 3rd sample. I tried one more warp with a little bit of color in the black warp.  Just to see how it reads. I didn't want to be weaving that idea on a later project and think "oh man, this would have been great in Stacey's weaving."  I'll talk more about that one in the next blog post.

I met with the church on Sunday. They had a lovely service and afterward an annual meeting that they were happy to have me at to introduce this commission piece in honor of Pastor Stacey. I was so glad to have samples that I could pass around so the church members that attended had something to touch and see as the project was explained. I held the pieces up against the wall. I was afraid to let the blue be too bright, but I need to dye the next batch brighter. I don't naturally tend towards really bright colors, I want more muted tones. This has been nice to get me out of my color-comfort-zone and it really brightens the studio! 

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Here I am working on one of these samples.

The Beginnings of a Commission for the First Baptist Church, Ann Arbor

Entrance the weaving will be hung closest to

The Agreement has been signed and I have cashed a check so I think I can publicly talk about a church commission that I am SO excited to be doing. I usually don't take on commissions, but, after a phone conversation and a deep-dive on the internet researching Stacey Simpson Duke's life as a Pastor, knitter and fellow fiber-addict I was quickly moved and inspired. (I could go on and on about her, the people I get to work with to discuss and celebrate her life, and how I'm moved to tears even though I have never met her, but I'm trying to keep my posts project-focused). There are so many reasons I took on this commission.

Proposed Wall, right side above the stairs

This commission actually had perfect timing. The last sampler piece that I took off of Delilah before I sold her I wasn't that pleased with and I'm not really driven to put together the cartoon that I have printed out. I did everything right, the yarn sett was correct, I liked the colors ok, but trying to use stash yarn is hard and it turned out just chunky and stiff. Through this I learned that even though I'm weaving for art-installation work (not wearables), the way the fabric feels and moves is really important to me. I weave with really thin rayon which allows the fabric to be airy. I love how it feels and moves with the slightest breeze. I ordered some small spools of rayon that I thought would work for this new piece and started winding and dyeing it. It dyes up beautifully and is thin, soft and light. It's going to be wonderful to weave with, so I ordered the large 4lb spool of it.

I also have been working on getting a feel for the design. I'm sticking to my usual layered words but we want it to be less static than my usual word-based designs.  Stacey had a lot of energy and brilliant curly hair so the feeling of movement and curling twisting motions comes to mind when people think about her and her personality. For this I decided it was officially time to learn a vector-based design system. Adobe Illustrator was always scary and unnecessary for me back in art school as I wasn't doing any graphic design and here I am, almost 20 years later, needing it. Thankfully, I now have Google and YouTube to help me figure out what I need for a free program and tutorials to go along with it. I downloaded Inkscape and found some videos to show me exactly what I needed to know. We won't discuss how Bryan pointed out that I should try a vector-based program years ago when he painfully watched how I was creating my cartoons with a very time-consuming process in Photoshop/Gimp. I'm needing to make words bend and twist and Inkscape allows for it. Yay for being open to change and learning new programs and tech!

Part of the design I've been carrying around in my bag to look over on occasion

Dyeing for me is meditative. The amount of filling, dipping, stirring and rinsing with water is slow and steady. I'm keeping track of my time but I cut out the wait-time that I have for pots to boil, yarn to soak and dry, etc. I do small-batch one-color-at-a-time dyeing these days and it works well for me. I also keep the kitchen extra-clean to keep dye and fabric separate from dishes and food. I miss having a dye lab but I found I don't need to large-batch dye since I dye project-by-project. I don't even wind extra long warp "just in case I want to do another piece and I'll already have the loom warped for it."  All of my work is fully their own entity these days from the dyeing to finish work. 

I grabbed everything I had dyed so far for our meeting at the beginning of the month to hold up to the wall that the weaving will be going on at the church. I was glad I brought everything I had dyed so far; one color combo was stunning (where I had originally thought it probably wouldn't work) and some of the gorgeous more muted tones that I had dyed looked drab and boring against the wall. We looked at it with no track lighting (the space doesn't have any lights pointed on it right now) and put held them skeins under the lights on another part of the wall to see how it looked. It's very much the color of the wall that's effecting the way the yarn colors play off of it. So I started dyeing to get really bright, saturated colors. 

I ordered more dyes to get a better purple (a base color option I also have in mind) and some other green and yellow options. I'm in love with how the chartreuse green turned out and having fun blending other colors although I'm trying not to go too overboard, they can get mucked up pretty quickly if I'm not careful.  Meanwhile I'm planning to sample a few different striping options to see how they look along with the "wavy" wording" which I hope I will have them ready for when we plan our next in-person meeting at the church to, again, put up on the wall.

I spent about 2 hours winding skeins into balls yesterday, these colors are so wonderful, I haven't done anything this bright in a really long time. I still have a few more skeins to wind and then I'll be able to wind the warp. As I said multiple times in my Instagram reels yesterday, I'm super excited to see how these stripe out in the weaving samples. 

Spinning swift during ball winding

4 Pod Earrings for Brave New World Reception

Sometimes I miss planning outfits for work and I definitely miss the automatic jewelry design and color inspiration that comes with thinking about what I should wear to dress up for work or something important. Now that my day job has me happily at a "working warehouse" I no longer have to make sure I'm wearing and looking a certain "brand." So I was excited about going through my closet to put together something for this important exhibit reception. I hadn't showed this many pieces in one place in a very long time and I was honored to be invited to show with this noteworthy group of fiber artists.

 The first step for this outfit was the shoes that I had finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase. I had been looking at them for months. I love John Fluevog shoes but I rarely have a reason to get dressed up anymore, still, I needed the Daisy Monster Mash in my collection when they went on sale. These were perfect for the "Brave New World: Fiber Art in the 21st Century" exhibit that I had a number of pieces showing at. The shoes got lots of attention along with the art.

Then do I wear a skirt or pants? The reception was over an hour away and was going to be an all day event so I opted for dress pants leftover from my days at Talbots and a favorite lavender tank with pattern details that went well with the pants from White House Black Market. I always prefer to have a tank or tee on and then I can layer it with a sweater/cardigan/zip hoodie if it gets cold.  The reception was on a warmish day and we had so many people attend that it got hot in the gallery.

So I had about a week to create a "statement" piece of jewelry. Only enough time for earrings, but at the very least big earrings I decided I should be able to put together. Besides, I didn't have a set of triple pod earrings in this color range yet. 

As I started beading pods, I let them talk to me as to how they wanted to be organized. Only three pods didn't seem to be suiting the layout with my chosen beads so a fourth pod was added to create an earring that flares nicely at the bottom half of the design.  These are currently, as of this post, available on my website for sale HERE.

Black and Grey Wide Bracelet and Earring Variations

I've been working with the color black a lot lately.  Usually I'm super inspired by lots of bright colors and, for no specific reason, black feels very cozy right now.  I do feel like my jewelry stock is lacking in black options and I'm having a tendency to lean toward a black base for my personal style as of late.* It layers with all other colors easily, so, I'm just following my spirit and letting my hands make what they want. 

This is what has come of it. First, a black, gunmetal and grey wide pearl clasp bracelet. In the past I have simply striped the colors with one full row of color at time for this style bracelet. This time I striped the strips every other row by row. I like the busyness of the patterning and I think it turned out stunning. 

Wide St. Petersburg Striped Strips Bracelet

Next is a pair of "huggie" earrings. I really like this style for work, it's simple, clean, a little bit flashy but not dangly. I think I meant to make them a little tighter to the ear but I always end up worrying that it looks too short between the post and the backing so I did an extra row and it made it a little longer and it doesn't "hug" my earlobe. I also have to remind myself that one can't account for where holes are in ear lobes so it may be loose on me but snug on someone else. In any event, I love wearing this style so I made another pair.

Huggie Earrings

Last, I decided to make a new pair of beaded blob earrings. I haven't made any of these in a long time and they're just fun to make and to wear. I hadn't done a pair in this color range, I feel like they always end up having some blue in them so here's a nice change for this style. 

Beaded Blob Earrings

Lets face it, I created this colorway for something new to wear at tonight for Midnight Madness in Ann Arbor. I'll be set up at my friend's meadery, Bløm Meadworks 100 S 4th Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 from 5-11ish. This has been my one pop-up holiday show the past few years and even if I don't sell much I love the vibe, other makers and people that attend this event. A big thanks in advance to my friend Jenn for joining me as it's kind of a long day and it's nice to have company on the drive. 

*Sidenote, Bryan and I were laughing about this a fe days ago because when we first met, he basically only wore black and I barely had any in my wardrobe. I had never seen so many black tee shirts before! Now I'm wearing black a lot more often whereas he's been leaning toward more colorful outfits.

Combining Bangles

Back when I was trying to make lower priced "stuff" to sell I started making "tiny bangles" for $20. Even $20 didn't feel good when I sold them due to the amount of work that I put into these bangles. I had made enough to fill a display and they've been floating around my studio and pop-ups for years now, occasionally 1 or 2 selling. I've gotten really tired of looking at them and they tend to represent the years when I had a desperation to sell something, anything. Now that I'm in a really good place and only make what I feel inspired to make I've been cleaning out my studio and removing anything that I don't like anymore or I'll cut it up to reuse the materials. 

These tiny bangles were initially on the chopping block but I have a hard time cutting up anything I've made, even if it's something I no longer like. I created them to be an option to layer with other bracelets and each other. The issue is that being only 2 or 3 beads wide doesn't allow them to keep a good bangle structure. So they end up a bit floppy and unattractive (in my mind). I'd layer them for a pop of color with other bracelets but now that I barely wear jewelry they just take up space that I'd like to reclaim.

One of my recent studio cleaning days I decided I might be able to put some of them together to make the bigger bangles that I like better. I put the first one together (above) and now I like it! They're actually fun to play with which stripes and solids go well together. It's a fun practice of putting together colors and designs in a direction I wouldn't usually take. 

Creative play has become more important to me than making to sell. I'm seeing more and more artists and makers throwing in the towel because they can't make enough to cover time, supplies, studio, not to mention the amount of work it takes to constantly post on social media, update websites etc. When we have to make to sell instead of play and discover it looses all the fun. I was starting to have days where it was more fun going to work at my day job then hunkering down in the studio. Ok, that still happens too.

This year has started to be a lot more about playing and rediscovering why I love fiber art rather than making any final products. It's more about process, play, design, new techniques and color. 

Neutral Green with Fuchsia Leaf Lariat Necklace

I forgot to post about this piece, it's already at the "Made in Michigan" Holiday Show at the Lansing Art Gallery, along with the rest of its matching earrings and bracelets. I decided I hadn't made a leaf lariat necklace in quite some time and I really enjoy this color group so it eventually came to be. I picked away at beading it in the evenings and finished it just before the show's drop off so I completely spaced on posting it to my blog until I ran into the photos. 

See this leaf lariat neckace at:

Reception: This Thurs. Nov. 9, 2023 from 5 - 8 PM

Holiday Webpage: https://lansingartgallery.org/2023-michigan-made-holiday-art-exhibition/

Facebook Event for the Opening Reception: https://fb.me/e/1pdOXENpb

Join Me for Weaver Sessions Spotlight for Convergence Wichita 2024

 

I'll be talking about the 2 seminars that I am leading at the Handweavers Guild of America Convergence Conference 2024 this week and next.  If you have the time to hop on to Zoom for these you can put in questions about these seminars during the Zoom. If you can't make it, you can watch these later on HGA's YouTube Channel.

The first Session Spotlight I am part of is this Thursday, November 9th at 1pm. I'll be talking about "Hands on Finishing your Work" which is an extension of last year's "Finish and Exhibit That Piece!" I decided to propose 3 hours for this seminar because there are a lot of types of finishing and problem solving that can happen with fiber work and I wanted time to address pieces that attendees are stuck on. I had a number of people throughout Convergence 2022 tell me that they heard my class was really informative and helpful. Another instructor told me it was wonderful I was offering this since it was a common question from students of her weaving classes...which isn't part of what she teaches. This version encourages students to bring in their piece or send me photos of works that they are stumped on so we can look at different options and ideas more in-depth.

The Second Session Spotlight I am in is next week, Monday, November 13th. In this one I will be talking about my 90 minute seminar "Keeping Track of Your Digital Art Life." Whether you are a working artist or just trying to keep documents, notes and photos organized this class will be full of the processes I use to digitally file my entire life (which is mostly my artwork).