She was bookin'...

I think of Chad Alice Hagen as a redheaded whirlwind.  Best to get a lot of sleep before one of her workshops  ~ you will definitely need the stamina.  And you probably won't be dozing during demos, won't be nipping out for *whatevers* because you will have stood in front of a table like this with your mind a bit blown and like most of us in her workshops, chomping at the bit to learn just HOW Chad makes these merino felt(ed) beauties.

"Resist Dyeing and Book Making" was held on our little island last summer.  Chad traveled all the way from her Asheville, NC digs to teach for three glorious days.  She only brought a few things with her  ;>}

Day one was about learning to resist dye the merino wool pre-felts using a huge assortment of binding, pinching, clamping, clipping and banding objects.  Our dye station was set up outside, the perfect spot for three of these:

While the Dye Master (Chad, in the yellow apron) kept the dye pots cooking, the sorters were kept busy.  Each bucket held all the bundles from one student which had to be separated between successive dye baths.  This is when the anticipation really started to build ~ waiting to unwrap our precious bundles was grueling!

By the second day, our felts (laid to dry on tables overnight) were ready for some serious scrutiny which included a whole lot of oooohing and aaaaahing and, "Can I have that one?"   I think I actually told someone that one of her pieces was going to disappear off her table overnight, HA!  The goal was to pick two pieces to embellish for book covers.  Chad made the rounds, offering her own share of ooohs & aaahs & "oops, that one fell in my pocket"...

Then came the hard part (for me anyway)...the bookbinding.  I don't think I have hands built for the task so I fumbled, grew a tad peeved with myself and decided in the end that stitching and beading were softer alternatives.  Book making is best left to stronger hands.  Sometimes it is just as important to know what we shouldn't be doing as it is to know what we should, right?

Here's a group view below of the covers for our coptic books, embellished with stitching and beadwork and ready to be filled with pages. That stunning black & blue one (2nd row on the right) belongs to my good friend Robin A., who came over from a neighboring island to join us for the workshop.  She wrote a wonderful post on her blog Beadlust, about this workshop.  If you aren't already familiar with Robin's extraordinary beadwork, leave a few moments to peruse the rest of her blog, too - it will not disappoint! 

Although I didn't complete my coptic book, I did finish my little wrap journal.  The binding on the spine was quite easy to get the hang of and I adore Chad's version of the bone and leather closure.

For Chad's own tales of her time out west, don't miss her post about it over on News from Studio A & B.  I think she liked it here.  She is threatening to come back.

In the meantime, check out Chad's Flickr photos of her FeltBooks and be prepared to drool.

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Bead Journal Project for January...

Wishing on a Blue Moon

This year, rather than working from a theme, I am journaling about whatever feels important to me in each particular month. The month of January began with the occurrence of a "blue moon" on New Year's Eve. This moon seemed to effect quite a few of us in some sort of profound way or another. An airline pilot friend wrote an amazing story about his flight that night. It seemed I really had no other choice in the matter - I too, must journal about this event.

What does it mean to witness such a phenomenon? Why does it effect us so? I stood in the dark for a long time on that eve.  It was icy cold.  Trees and shrubs had dropped all their leaves and seed pods hung in silhouette from stark, dormant branches. I have always been in love with the dark, never having fear, not even as a child so for me, this night sky was a velvet cloak, a large comfortable mantle of stars.  And I let it cover me while that giant blue moon took all my wishes right up to the heavens...  

The piece is about 7 1/2" square, give or take. I'm going to attach each page to an 8" square backing (as yet to be determined.)  I've chosen a square format this year for a couple of reasons.  One is to purposely break my attachment to rectangles and two, is to force myself to deconstruct the resist dyed Merino felts in order to reassemble them into something entirely different. Some background on the felts I'll be using can be found here. This piece is a combination of two felts cut & sewn together.  You can click on any photo to view it a bit larger.

Aside from figuring out how to combine a mix of textiles, one of my biggest challenges was deciding how much of the felt should show and how much I could cover up with beads & stitches while still maintaining a feeling of balance. I wrestled with that A LOT.  I have decided to hold onto the mantra "it doesn't have to be perfect" while I continue to figure that one out.

New things I'm discovering this time around:

how much I like rough edges, selvages, and my preference for piecing together irregular shapes

while keeping all those uneven edges...

...how much fun it is to try combining different textiles

 and then add stitching...

...how rewarding it is to learn from others,

like how I learned from Jude at Spirit Cloth

about turning down a corner to reveal its better side...

...and then there's just how far sheer determination can take you

when you've got your mind set on using that teal-colored wool vest!

A couple other notes: the piecing together was hugely difficult for me, so constructing the base on which to bead took the most amount of time - oodles of time. I never thought I'd be able to say that the beading was the easy part! In addition, I totally enjoyed learning to needle felt, couching yarn and I really, really loved stitching, way more than I would have imagined.

So there it is - finished at last!

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Needle felting sampler

Honey, I shrank the kids vest!

I just couldn't give up on that teal colored wool vest (or maybe not all wool) that I wrote about here.

The color is too perfect, just what I need for my January page of the Bead Journal Project...so this time I boiled the heck out of it on the stove. Using a couple of long metal spoons, I agitated the pot for about half an hour, dipping the whole soggy mess twice into cold water baths. It did not shrink too much more from the washing machine experiment, but it did shrink some. Enough for me to call it a keeper.  

This is part of said vest, above, used as a base for a little needle felting sampler.  Although you can still see the knitting stitches in the vest material, I like it because of the texture.  Pardon the odd assortment of colors - I was going for contrast, not *art*.  The wool, yarns & fibers I played with are left to right:  hand spun wool-something that I traded for in a swap; Noro yarn (wool/mohair/silk, from Japan); hand dyed Wensleydale locks; Cascade Yarns (all wool, from Italy); hand dyed silk (throwster's waste); Merino wool roving (spiral dyed).

This was my first venture into the world of needle felting and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to tack everything down.  Lots of that ease had to do with this little gizmo:

This is a "pen style" needle felting tool, made by Clover, which is fitted at the moment with three needles but you can use only two, or even one needle, depending on the details of your hand work. I chose this style especially for its grip since I am blessed with grandma's hands, arthritis and all. You've gotta watch out for these puppies though - I think the word "barbed" is an understatement.

One last observation before I get back to the worktable...Merino roving is definitely the cat's meow!  (Apology to my dawg, sorry woofie.)  The way the roving behaves while its being felted is unlike any of the other materials I used and since you can pull off even the slightest little wisps of wool, the possibilities for subtlety and the layering of color are going to be a whole world unto themselves.

Till next time...

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