Following the thread of a thought

page one ~ from, The Illustrated Glossary of Dye Plants

page two ~ from, The Illustrated Glossary of Dye Plants

page three ~ from, The Illustrated Glossary of Dye Plants

In retrospect, I probably should have named this playful compendium

The Imaginary Illustrated Glossary of Dye Plants

or

The Illustrated Imaginarium of Dye Plants

for I don't believe this will ever be anything but a little book

that lives solely in my mind, produced for a bit of fun on Instagram.

But I suppose it's been good practice should I decide at some juncture

to try my hand at the real thing ...

Along another line of thought, the title of this post is not original to me.

I'm sure I gleaned it from jude at Spirit Cloth at some point and

I sincerely hope she is given fair credit & attribution from others

for all she offers there.

This is a sore subject with me at the moment ...

the *borrowing* - no, let me speak plain - the stealing

 that I read and see running rampant on the internet amongst

artists, creatives, workshop organizers

and a whole host of wannabes, coat tail riders and ladder climbers.

It's a double-edged sword out here on the web; the need & desire to share work

counterbalanced by all those who are watching, researching,

and will so blatantly 

rip others off

in

a

 heartbeat.

Is it really so hard to come up with one's own original words or works?

Is it that difficult to ask permission first?

Or to put some dedicated energy

into coming up with personal work that is truly authentic

and not just a blatant copy of someone else's work?

I've seen this rampant in the world of photography for years

and now sadly, I see it running rampant amongst the cloth dyers

[eco-dyers, eco-printers, contact printers, natural dyers, and many stitchers],

a tribe I am somewhat new to and a little on edge about of late ...

it's incredibly disheartening.

And I'm feeling the need to take care.

::::

I have no intention of getting into arguments with folks over this subject

and I'm half inclined to close the comments section because of it,

but there are some friends who visit here who I don't want to silence

so I'll leave it open.

Talk to me.

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... the making of 'Summer Rain'

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Weaving a tideline

Today I constructed a makeshift loom

done the old way from things at  hand:

a basket ~ just the right size, long and narrow ~ and a warp of leftover jute

from the bean trellis.

I first wrote about this simple style of loom-making back HERE,

with gratitude for learning.

The next ingredient: castoffs from the scrap pile, stuffed in a holdall where every leftover bit 

from every project I've ever sewn resides in one big chaotic jumble.

Seams.  Refuse.  Hemlines.  Offcuts.  Selvage.  Lots and lots of fray.

Flotsam and jetsam of the textile variety.

I need to create a tideline for some completely ordinary stones

that are in the process of becoming

something else entirely.

You see, one thing led to another after my earlier  *choosing of the stones*  with dawg.

Stones came home with us.  They sat on the kitchen counter.  Then they sat on the bed.

And before you ask, no, they did not start to talk to me  ;>]

But something was brewing ...

an idea, another story on cloth,

carried by the weight of stones and the glint of thousands of tiny beads ...

somewhat autobiographical ... the only way I seem to be able to stitch a tale these days.

No matter how sidetracked I become (all the naturally dyed fabric I can't seem to stop churning out ... 

so beautiful in it's own right, but will it sit folded on a shelf for eternity?) I always come back to 

my one main truth ...

whether woven or boro-ed, appliqued, pieced or patched, 

textiles are the landscapes where my beadwork will live.

: : :

I'm inspired today by this video, sent by Barb from our merry band of dyers (thank you!)
It's for all us who haven't been satisfied with our creative work at one time or another ...
or now ...

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

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Rags to become riches

This finally came off the box loom.

You can see the creases on the sides where the fabric held onto its frame for such a long time.

Before removing the weaving, I knew I needed to secure the outer perimeter.

This ~ I thought ~ was going to take quite a bit of needle maneuvering

so I expected the invisible basting to take a lot longer than it did.  But as I sat on the stair landing,

happily stitching under the bright light from the skylight, 

my needle seemed to fly through these soft cloths.

The gratitude I felt!

For some backstory, please click on this post...

it will explain everything about why I am so grateful to no longer be "stuck."

This might be one of my favorite cloth techniques of all time.  Jude, from Spirit Cloth, taught this 

in her 'Contemporary Woven Boro' workshop...I was instantly smitten and

have so looked forward to getting back to it.

So today, when I finally picked it up to release it from its framework,

I became ELATED....

I felt a lot like this

~ New Wings ~

courtesy of Duy Huynh

A new landscape for beadwork ... let's see where this goes now, shall we?

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For WAS and jude...

spirit

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One thousand feathers...

...what if...?

This is a question that Jude Hill from Spirit Cloth never stops asking.

And this time, that question led her to create this...

...the Magic Feather Project is a collaborative effort

open to anyone willing to stitch one simple feather.

All the feathers will then gather at Jude's place, a flock of at least one thousand,

where they will be joined together into larger cloths...

for charitable uses...

for the greater good of children.

Feathers are already flying 'round the world!

The gathering is well underway and can be seen over here...

...all the info about how to participate, including a short video tutorial, is here.

There is no end to the possibilities of feather inspiration...

Double-crested cormorant
(c) Amy Marques

...the beauty of our winged companions is all around us.

Bengal eagle owl
(c) hawkgenes

photographer unknown, from my Tumblr collection

We need only to open our eyes.

unknown photographer, from my Tumblr collection

Many hands are needed and all are welcome to join...

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Stuck between some rags and a hard place...

A little w.i.p...

modern day "rags" woven onto a make-do loom, once the bottom half of a box of notecards.

Light as a feather and easy to hold, just 5 by 7 inches.  Splendid idea, wish it had been mine...

... Jude Hill's  'Contemporary Woven Boro' class is in full swing

and this tension technique comes from creating a small frame from whatever we have at hand.

I know I'm not alone when I say I  ***LOVE***  this process, weaving without a foundation...

The warp is from torn bits of an old silk blouse...all the rest scraps from this & that.

*****

A silly question...ever tear cloth with your teeth?

I'm an expert now: chomp down hard at the place you are starting the tear

and pull strong & steady with one hand straight out in front of you.

Heh, you never know when such skills could come in handy...

They co-mingle so nicely, all those tiny ribbony pieces...

Here is the back looking much like an Apricot Surprise birthday present.

Fray heaven!

I couldn't tie bows (more on that below) so the ends are knotted instead...

*****

So what about this "hard place" I mentioned in the title of this post?

I am unable to sew.  Not a stitch.

Unable to use my right hand for most anything at the moment...

The doc says he can fix me up, only a matter of time...time which is ticking faster now with my boro mates.

So this is why you are not seeing any basting...no surface embellishment of any kind.

 Hope you like *puffy* as much as I do, it will have to suffice for now.

...just wanted you to know...

*****

While so many parts of our country are still covered in deep snow & frigid cold,

we were able to enjoy THIS today... 

View from the Painter's Studio

~ painting by Caspar David Friedrich, 1805 ~

Till later my friends, always so good to have you stop by,

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Running with stitches...

Scraps.  Lots and lots of them.  Fabrics piled according to color are starting to commandeer an entire corner of my workroom.  Recycled, discarded, second-hands and third-hands, the entire lot has come from being something else.  This idea sits well with me and I think I could spend the rest of my life and never touch new cloth again.

Stitching a few bits & pieces together now, making "components" for use in the upcoming Cloth to Cloth workshop, taught by Jude Hill.  Still working with raw, torn edges...admitting here that I am completely smitten with all things frayed.  

Also smitten with the simple running stitch.  What a restful enterprise coming from a stitch named for so much movement!  Nosed around, trying to learn more about it & came upon this magnificent book:

Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal

from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz and the Stella Kramrisch Collections

It's the catalog from an exhibition I wish I hadn't missed, on display earlier in the year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  This is the first book-length study on kanthas published outside of South Asia - 304 pages of gloriously illustrated splendor.  More examples from the exhibition can be found on the museum site here. 

Some potent words from Darielle Mason, the Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalyan Art, who organized the exhibition,

"Like American patchwork quilts, kanthas are about memory.

They connect families and generations and they connect

the present with the past.

The everyday lives of Bengali women were seldom recorded

prior to the late 20th century, so kanthas are often

the only surviving physical traces of women's presence,

and the only way their personal voices may be heard."

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Mending with the blues

The other day over at her place, Spirit Cloth, Jude was playing with gaps.  This got me to thinking about a few gaps of my own...

...ever thought about whether you are left-kneed or right-kneed?  Neither had I until I realized that ALL of my favorite jeans eventually look just like this -- a big hole in the left knee.  Never the right -- just the left.  Good to have things in ones life one can always count on, I suppose  ;>}

Pawing through the mending pile, the choice for the *sacrificial lamb* jeans was not the least bit difficult.  You should see the derriere on this pair...beyond hope I decided.  Off with its leg!

Thought it would be fun to just play with stitches, no particular goal in mind except to stop the drafts and add some reinforcement so out came a menagerie of embroidery thread recently gleaned from the local thrift store.  Ended up using every blue in the bag.

Kept the raggedy edges all 'round (I'm prone to that lately) although future laundering should fray them up nicely.  In the meantime, my favorite gardening jeans have a new lease on their days in the dirt.  Thanks to Jude for inspiring with her own particular style of "knee keepers."  


I love my new knee.  But look at that perfect RIGHT knee...what's up with that?!  One of life's mysteries.

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Story cloth...

...a bit of a departure for me, this kind of stitching, this kind of story telling.  Actually, it's more than a departure - I think this is a new path.  

There's a marvelous phenomenon happening within the cyber world...online workshops.  Artists are generously sharing their knowledge & experience through the computer these days.  If not for opportunities like this, I probably would never have the chance to learn about telling stories with cloth from a textile artist like Jude Hill.  Spirit Cloth is her blog, an inspiring place to visit and learn.

The 'Spirit Cloth' workshop is over now, but I am still (along with several others) finishing my piece.

Oh my, what I am learning!  I started out wanting to teach my hands to stitch.  And this is indeed happening.  What is also happening is learning the language of cloth...how different fabrics *sit* with each other, how edges speak...or shout, how moods can be created with piecing techniques and how texture lends personality.

My story cloth is also a sampler of sorts, as I've never before done any kind of quilting and I wanted to experiment with all that Jude had on offer.  I am even going to add words, something I mentioned in class that I have always avoided.  Just because I want to break some of my own rules - try on a new dress of a different color  :>]

All the cloth I'm using has been repurposed from something else.  Old shirts, blouses, stained linens, a torn skirt, and a discarded pillow case are included in this making.  Also, precious bits & pieces from blog friends in other parts of the world...Teresa's natural dye fragments from Australia...pink avocado-dyed sheers from Heike at Gerdiary, in Germany...Diane's amazing embroidery thread, all the way from France.

Working style for our class was completely improvisational.  There was/is no plan.  I didn't even have a story to begin with, just a jumble of cloth pieces waiting to tell me where they wanted to go.  And then the story did begin and the cloth went through several permutations.  This way of working is exactly like improvisational bead embroidery (my first love) and the entire reason I wanted to learn how to make story cloth bases.  Because for me, its all about creating landscapes where beads will live...

    

Now, a bit more stitching to do, words to collage into place, and then on to the beadwork...

Here are a few other stories that came from our workshop, each unique and WONDERFUL.
Manya
Cat
Susan C.
Linda S.
Lisa
Sandi
Pat
Suzanna

Till next time friends,

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