June 2009 – Page 3 – Daryl's Blog

Sandstone Layers Jacket

I’d like to be able to do a photo shoot of all the new work I’ve done over the last few months, before I leave next week for Iowa. So it makes sense to focus on finishing the Sandstone Layers Jacket, since I’m so close. I spent all day yesterday working on it, in between last minute conference details for NEWS (New England Weavers Seminar) and for the Midwest Conference next week. It’s those little details that can drive you nuts, and end up taking the entire day. But from my lengthy experience in traveling to guilds and conferences, it is the details that can make all the difference between a success and a disaster. There are so many things that can go wrong, especially if there is an airline involved, and those things that involve an airline are completely out of my control. But what is in my control, is my responsibility, and I’m pretty good with the details. The hardest part here is keeping all the conferences straight, and remembering who I’ve emailed what to!

On to the jacket…

I took apart the shoulder, as far into the neck as I could. This pattern called for a back shoulder with considerable ease, and I was able to remove most of the excess ease, and that allowed me room to trim the back of the armscye (armhole opening on the jacket). So, first I restitched the shoulder seam, with the excess back shoulder extending beyond the front.

You can see in the photo on the right how broad the back armhole was cut, so I recut the back armhole to reduce the width across the back of the garment.

Once I reset in the sleeves, I tried the jacket on and with a couple of bathroom mirrors, I was able to get a clean view of the back armhole and it looked so much better. Sorry, I couldn’t hold the mirror and take a photo too!

The next step was the belt loops. I got these pinned on, but had a real time getting them stitched on, they were so thick, I busted a number of #16 needles, (my #18’s seemed to have disappeared, hmmmm…….) Usually I blame my 19 year old son when things in the house disappear, they usually reappear in his room months later, but I can’t blame the disappearance of size 18 sewing machine needles on a 19 year old…

I ended up sewing the tucked under top and bottom of the belt loop to the jacket, the belt loops were long enough to get the machine foot underneath the loop and zigzag in place.

That leaves the buttonholes, which I saved for last. I didn’t want to do a fussy bound buttonhole on this jacket, there are too many details as it is, and this is a drapey sort of casual jacket to begin with. I was hoping to do handworked buttonholes, using a machine made one as a sturdy base for the buttonhole, because handwoven fabric can be too ravelly to support a handworked one. I spent about an hour figuring out how to do a machine worked buttonhole in my Janome 6600, usually I just use the old fashioned Grist Buttonholer Attachment on one of my other machines, but I wanted to see what this Janome could do. The size of the stitching of the buttonhole is very narrow (see gray buttonholes below in the photo right), but the ease of doing one that matches the button length is pretty convenient. Actually this works well as a base for a handworked buttonhole, since the stitching is narrower than one from the old fashioned Grist Attachment. I took a cone of the same yarn I used for the weft, and did a hand worked buttonhole over the machine made buttonhole, after I cut it open. I am a real fanatic on this , having been taught tailoring when I was 12, I have a really hard time with a regular machine made buttonhole on outerwear, the cut raw edge looks like a wound to me in an otherwise gorgeous garment. It is one of the things I point out when I do my infamous fashion show tours of “inside” the garments, at handweaving conferences.

I still have to actually bite the bullet and put in the buttonholes, (this part is really scary because if I don’t like what’s happening, ripping out a machine made buttonhole is virtually impossible…) But the jacket is really coming together. I like it, and am thinking of what to put on the bottom, I have a commercial skirt that I’ve been wanting to recut to a short above the knee pencil skirt, so the mind is off onto another project before I even finish this one, which is as it should be…

I leave you with this wonderful quote from a good friend and weaving buddy, Ruby Leslie from Vermont…

“Either it’s a good time, or it’s a good story!”

I’ll be chaperoning a cruise around Manhattan tonight, well into the late hours, with a bunch of newly graduated high school students, so the above motto most likely will be really appropriate tomorrow morning…

A Sunny Day?

Wow, the sun actually came out today. What a surprise! Course more rain due in tomorrow, there was even a front page article in the newspaper today about how serious climate/weather pattern changes are here. Well the plants are loving it!

I’m now in wind down mode, tying up loose ends, starting the preparations for my trip next week to the Midwest Weavers Conference in Grinnell, Iowa. I’ve never been to Iowa, so this should be a treat. A week before I leave, I need to ship out the consummable stuff, like the handouts, raw materials, and some monographs to sell. So yesterday, I spent the entire day printing and binding stacks of monographs, and the handouts, and burnt out my year old new binding machine. Bummer…

The box is packed, and on its way to Grinnell, and the good news, is it contains about 50 yards of Red Dot Tracer, which I’m happy to say, is finally available, from Pellon, after months of gnashing of teeth and complaining, and moaning, I got 150 yards of it via UPS yesterday, in time to chop it up in two yard packs and ship it with the handouts. I have been in a quandry since HTCW stopped shipping early last fall, and the product became unavailable. Pellon bought the plates for the Red Dot Pattern Tracing Material, but they printed it on their Tru-Grid base, though improved from the original Tru-Grid base, this one is more stable than the old one, I still don’t like it because it doesn’t hold a pencil mark well. For a number of reasons, this is really important to me. I have multi-sized patterns I use for my classes, and the lines have to stay true and accurate. And so do the lines the students trace. Anyway, the Red Dot has now been printed on a different base, one closer to the original one from HTCW, and I’m hoping it will perform as well. I’m crossing my fingers.

So, now to the next project, which is a gallery talk I have to give next Wednesday as one of the exhibiting artists at HGA’s Small Expressions Exhibit at Grinnell College’s Faulconer Gallery. I wanted to finish one of the pieces on the loom that I started last spring, so I could get a shot of it and include it in my talk, since it is woven in the same technique as the pieces on exhibit there. (If you click on “Small Expressions” under “Upcoming Events/February 24th” – which was when the show originally opened in Missouri, you will see the pieces they selected for exhibit)

I’ve blogged about this technique, a Theo Moorman Inlay on a cotton ground, in many previous posts. Search for “Big Sister” and you’ll find many references. I printed the image on silk, and then cut it into quarter inch strips, and wove them back into the loom, in sequence while weaving a backing fabric at the same time. One of my blogs has detailed shots of the process. If I have time I’ll search for it.

Anyway, the image here was shot the end of August, 2001, while vacationing a mere 20 miles away with my children. We took them to the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, and then up to the roof of the World Trade Center. I titled this photo “Top of the World”. I don’t need to tell anyone what happened a mere two weeks later…

It is a chilling photo, the shaky appearance of the towering structure, from the rewoven strips, two innocent children doing what children do when posing for a photo for dad, (notice the rabbit ears my son is sneaking in behind his sister’s back), I am haunted by this photo every time I look at it. Reweaving it back together row by row, was somehow healing.

My daughter walked in tonight while I was photographing this for the blog, and plopped her latest adventure in front of me, a large paper box, carefully folded into a square. She said, “Guess how many boxes are inside of this?”. I took a wild guess at 10, and was sort of surprised when she told me I wasn’t even close. Can you believe there were 20 little paper boxes, all just a fraction smaller than each one they nest into, and she proceeded to unwrap each origami box to unveil the next box, until she had them all lined up on my cutting table. The smallest one was half the size of my thumbnail.

You have to love hanging around with my daughter. She disappears into her room, and comes out with the oddest adventures, she should have been studying for her Spanish final tomorrow, but folding paper boxes was much more soothing to her soul, and she was quite proud of her accomplishment.

Ah to be 16 again… See, that’s my problem. I never blow anything off I’m suppose to be doing for the shear joy of creating. I’ve gotten way too responsible in my old age…

Speaking of old age, we had a couple of great theatre adventures, last Friday we saw The Full Monty at the Papermill Playhouse, which was absolutely a terrific piece of theatre, the cast was unbelievable, one scene stealer after another, and if you live anywhere near Northern NJ or NYC, get yourself a ticket now! The show runs until July 14th I believe. There is a cameo appearance by stage veteran Elaine Stritch, who according to the papers is 84 years old. I want to be able to get out there and still perform in my studio and on the road at 84. That would mean I have another 30 years to go!

And last night, my husband and I escaped to the movie theatre to see “Up”. Another Pixar/Disney hit, one of the most charming stories I’ve seen in a long time, well, you just have to take my word and go to the movies. You won’t be sorry. The star of “Up” is a very old man, who is about to be forceably taken to a retirement home, the love of his life is gone, and he gets his house to lift off into the air with a gazillion helium balloons and flies it all the way to Paradise Falls in South America. I know it sounds like the oddest plot line imaginable, but to see it, and how the story develops, is truely amazing. It is almost believable. It has been a long time since I’ve been to the movies and heard an audience applaud at the end of a film. The show was packed, and they did applaud.

Success!

The weight of the last nine months has been lifted off my shoulders, and no, I didn’t actually give birth, rather metaphorically, I finished the Website Success seminar that I agreed to put together many many months ago. I struggled with this, because there is so much information, and much of it is rather technical and dry, and I had so much research to do. I still want to run it by a few more of my technical friends, and tweak it here and there, but the 80 slide presentation is largely finished, well in time for my August preview, and I couldn’t be more relieved. And I’m happy with it. Course I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t happy with, but I’m also proud. This was a huge stretch for me, and I learned sooooo much, mostly that I haven’t even scratched the surface. I think of web design a lot like weaving. Weaving can take a lifetime of study, and there are so many different aspects of it to consider. You can have momentary beginner’s success with a very simple project that a teacher helps you set up, but no matter how old and experienced you are, there is always more to learn.

Now I can focus on the next fires to put out…

Meanwhile, the surprise box of yarn arrived from WEBS. (see previous post). This is an enormous amount of yarn for $139. including shipping. And the large $5. cones of cotton flake in the background are in perfect colors to overdye.

Which brings me to the current weather, which has been positively ghastly. I am looking for some beautiful sunny days so I can start dyeing some of this yarn I’m sitting on, into some beautiful warps that will keep me busy weaving all winter. Alas, we saw the sun for about an hour this morning, after yet again another violent thunderstorm. The forecast for the next couple days says sunny in the 70’s, but I’m not buying it. We have had dreary cold rain for so many days now I’m rather thinking I’m still in Seattle…

The only good thing about all this rain, is the gardens, which are positively exploding with color and greenery and lush tropical plants (I’m talking rainforest here…) And of course, not to be completely depressing, there is the explosion of the weed plants as well, those that don’t belong where they are popping up. So, even though the sun is non existent, I managed to snap a quick couple of shots before it has started to rain again.

In the first photo on the left, there is a glimpse of our pool, which so far no one has used because it has been so rainy and cold. Somewhere in there is a beautiful iron gazebo, completely covered with a canopy of vine-y things. And all of the rain has made the climbing rose bush in the foreground, shed all its petals like snow. We have lots of outdoor sculptures, largely because we love to collect art and fine craft, and all the walls and surfaces in the house are completely filled, but there is always room for one more out door tchotchke. And they never need dusting!

The photo on the right has a lovely sculpture in the foreground, called “Drunken Wheelbarrow”. (Actually we needed to keep it turned on its side so it wouldn’t collect 84 gallons of rainwater which will breed mosquitos). Hidden in the back of that photo, under lush vegetation is a sizable pond complex of spillways and waterfalls. It is a delight to hear the gurgling of the water, the twittering of the birds, and the tones of the Monogolian Windchimes my husband gave me for my birthday.

Oops, I’m posting this quick, violent thunderstorm just struck…

2 Hours later…

I’m back, whew, what a storm. Anyway, I was commenting on how beautiful our gardens were, the latest storm caused rivers of water down and across the yard. But usually there is a lovely eco system happening, fish swimming in the ponds, frogs hovering just below the surface or on a lily pad, chipmunks scurrying all around, and birds everywhere. From the height of the balcony out my bedroom, I zoomed down and captured these two shots.

In the shot on the left, there are two frogs hiding, can you spot them?

And this little creature on the right, scurried onto a pathway, covered with drenched rose petals.

When the storm started, my daughter and I quick shut down our computers, and then played around in the studio, waiting for it to pass, tidying up the cutting table which was completely out of control. One of the piles on the table was the mats from the Placemat Exchange, so we took advantage of no electronics for a couple hours, and we got the hems pressed in. Bri, my daughter sat and started handsewing, notice that purple is NOT her favorite color, <g> and the gorgeous 34 strand knotted ankle band she is wearing, which she just completed over the weekend.

And finally, I’m making slow progress on the jacket. I did get one of the sleeves in, and the second pocket, but I’m concerned with the fullness across the back now that one of the sleeves is in, and I’m thinking I need to remove the sleeve, undo the shoulder seam and take out the excessive ease across the back shoulder the pattern called for, and recut the back armhole. The fabric is giving quite a bit, and I don’t want it that slouchy.

I love the colors in this fabric. The green wash is so unusual next to the rust, and it is so textured. If you are new to my blog, I should mention I wove this fabric, from hand dyed warps, and there is more of a description in a past blog. The jacket fabric is called Sandstone Layers, based on one of the palettes from one of my fabric forecasts in Handwoven Magazine, and the fabric hung in the yardage exhibit at Convergence Tampa Bay 2008. I cut some of the fabric into a window shade, which also hung in a functional textile exhibit in Tampa. I had just enough left to create this jacket. So here is what I have so far, I only need another sleeve, and the large belt loops. (And handworked buttonholes…)

Stay tuned…

Just Plodding Along…

Well, I’m getting caught up on house work, and paperwork, and I’m actually making substantial progress on the Website Success seminar. It is coming together easier than I imagined. So most of my days are sitting in front of the computer, surfing the web for sites I like, plugging in data, using things like Webopedia as my technology dictionary. I’m learning so much, that’s never a bad thing.

BUT…

This seminar is costing me a little fortune…

So, picture this…. I’m sitting at the computer for 8 hours straight. An email comes in, I hop over and answer it. Especially when I get one granting me permission to use their website home page in my presentation. And then I get a WEBS alert…

For those of you who don’t know WEBS, it is this wonder of a yarn store, near Amherst, MA, that carries tons of knitting yarns, and more importantly TONS of weaving yarns. They give nice volume discounts, and I buy a lot of stuff from them. Hence the “alerts”. This is a lot like an Amazon.com alert. “Since you bought this particular book, you might want to know about…” OK, I’m a sucker for books. And about 30% of the time, I just have to have the book they are steering me into…

WEBS is just as bad. The WEBS alert comes into my inbox, appearing on the lower right corner of my screen, no matter what program I’m in, and I’m really torn… Do I open it knowing full well I’m probably going to have to get out my credit card? Or do I just hit delete…..

OK, so I glanced at the subject line, BAD MISTAKE… It said, “…great cone sale“. That’s all I had to see, and I clicked on it. So, $125. later, I am back to my website seminar… It was really the rayon bouclé that did me in. $15. for a two pound cone. It is normally $16.95 a pound. What else could I do? And there was that cotton flake, in surprise colors (I love a surprise), you don’t get to pick, but it was $5. for a 2 pound cone…

So I’ll get a nice surprise package in a few days…

Meanwhile, I get about an hour in the evenings to sew, which is a nice treat at the end of a long day of staring at a computer screen. The Sandstone Layers jacket is moving along, it is hard to see much of a change from the last post I did of this jacket, but all the couching (with a rayon bouclé yarn) is finished around the collar, the fronts, and the hem. And I have one pocket attached. I’m really liking how this is coming out, at first I thought it was really busy and detailed, but that’s actually appealing to me in a military sort of way, the belt is very cool, but I’ll know better when the big belt loops are on. There is a two piece sleeve as well. Lots of details left, the second pocket, handworked buttonholes, lots of big belt loops, and of course the sleeves.

Stay tuned…

The Party’s Over

And what a party it was! But sadly, all good things must come to an end, and reality takes over! So now I have a studio full of stuff to make, lots of wonderful ideas, and no time to actually sit and make stuff. Sound familiar?

I leave in two weeks for the first of a half dozen teaching commitments, which will take up most of my summer. In between I’ll be working on an article on the Designers Challenge from 2008 for SS&D, and a book review, revamping my keynote address for New England Weavers Seminar, and building the newest seminar on Website Success. This last one is a killer, and has been haunting me, lurking in the back of my mind since I agreed to do it last fall.

The more I research, the more I get overwhelmed. And all that stuff lurking around me, just calling me to come and play with it…

But I got up early, dusted my downstairs, fed the snake (don’t ask), put in the next load of laundry, cleared away all the clutter, made some breakfast, tackled some of the emails I didn’t get to answer yesterday, filled a book order, and finally sat down to work on the website seminar. Surprisingly it went well. I’m moving along on it, I have a number of resources to pull from, largely it is deciding what is important to cover, and what is “Way Too Much Information” for a 2 1/2 hour seminar.

So, I won’t be any fun until this seminar is put to bed, you’ll just have to entertain yourselves for awhile, but meanwhile, I did promise photos of the fabric I bought at the Fabric Depot in Portland, OR. for $5./yd, for my poor fading rocker. My mother in law gave this rocker to my husband and me for our wedding, we reupholstered it when she gave it to us, and we have been married now for more than 30 years. The fabric is worn to shreds, and it is on the list, the very long list of things to do around the house, but finding a fabric that I think looks great moved the reupholstering job up on the list, just slightly. Maybe in September. No wait, I promised my guild I’d redesign their website. October? No, I promised my other guild I’d redesign their website. Well, for now, I’ll just leave the fabric sitting on the rocker.

I darted out to my car this morning during a massive thunder storm, to gather up the silk scarves that were curing in black plastic, still on the floor where I had left them. I rinsed them thoroughly, like Kerr told us, and hung them to dry.

I’m so loving this technique. The lack of planning, the instant gratification, and the possibilities are making me really want to just dive into getting some screens, a padded cover for my work table and running amok! Alas, I have things to take care of first…

But they are pretty, and I have lots to look forward to. I’m hoping to spend a couple of days this summer, mixing dyes for some warps, and getting a bunch of warps painted to work on through next year, I’ve run out of handwoven fabric to sew, and am really itching to get my big loom up and running again. It has been naked waaaay too long… Of course, whatever dyes are left from that escapade can be thickened and screened on whatever is laying around. Too many techniques, not enough hours in the day….

Stay tuned…