Sometimes there is no other way but to hit CTRL+Z…

I love that pair of keys on the keyboard.  CTRL+Z is the short cut for undo last action (on the PC).  I wish there was a CTRL+Z for life.  After trying hard not to listen to my instincts all week, I’ve finally decided that I do know what I’m talking about, and to actually listen to myself for a change, and completely undo a project, go all the way back to the beginning, and then I know I’ll be so much happier.

I got one of those forwards today in my inbox, you know the kind, pages of one liners, and I usually just delete, or give a quick glance, and then delete.  Unless it comes from my friend Dawn.  She is quite discerning.  She only sends the best, most wicked types of internet humor.  She hasn’t let me down yet.  The latest forward featured 24 adult truths.  There were a couple worth repeating, like #10: Bad decisions make good stories.  Sort of goes along with my philosophy that nothing bad ever happens to an artist, it is all fuel for their work.  My favorite for this week anyway, was #11: You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work or at home, when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day, and in my case, it was the rest of the week.

See, it all started with the jacket I’m sewing, and the trim I’m weaving to go with it.  I thought all was going well, though the voice in the back of my head kept interrupting my days, telling me that all was not well.  My husband, who is just now back in Saudi Arabia for another three weeks, reminded me that I haven’t blogged in 10 days.  That would probably be because I haven’t wanted to blog because the main project I’m working in isn’t going well if I were truly honest.

For starters, I got the body of the jacket sewn together.  The fabric is pretty light weight.  The pattern directions call for interfacing the fronts, which makes sense because they have to support a collar and heavy trim down the front.  But the rest of the jacket is looking and feeling pretty flimsy.  And honestly, I know I’m not going to be happy even with a full lining.  What I really need to do is completely take the jacket apart, and fuse a poly tricot interfacing on the back of all the pattern pieces.  So I avoided this by finding all kinds of other things to do.

Like Wednesday, I took a ride down to AT&T Headquarters in Bedminster, NJ, where our guild president Caroline works.  Apparently they have in their possession a vintage Sheila O’Hara tapestry from the 1980’s, I believe I understood it was woven for a communications exposition in San Francisco originally, and no one is quite sure how it ended up in NJ.  So a couple of us arranged to meet Caroline and take a tour.  The piece is lovely, Sheila had lost touch with the tapestry, and was thrilled to find out it was accounted for and in a beautiful setting in a telecommunications company.  In addition, there is a very very large graphic tapestry that spans the side wall of the cafeteria, made by someone initialed PC.  It is an amazing piece of corporate textile installation, and I’m thrilled it seems to be holding up and is well cared for.

Yesterday, our guild sponsored a winter February Freebie, a day of kumimimo braiding with Marsha Atkinson.  I’ve known Marsha for years, she was a former member of the guild, and moved from the loom to the braiding stand and never looked back.  She did a great job with the class, and I was thrilled to learn what to do with the Maru-dai, the traditional equipment for Japanese Braiding, instead of my usual foam disk.  And I was thrilled to learn something other than the standard 16 strand braid I always do, we did an eight strand round cord, square cord, and a flat braid.  As always, more possibilities.  That’s me in the back right hand corner of the group shot.  And that’s my daughter in the photo on the upper left working on a Maru-dai on the floor.

Still thinking about the jacket that wasn’t really going well, and having no loom with anything fun on it, I pulled another batch of my dyed yarns and laid them out in a palette spread.  I didn’t base this grouping on any previous inspiration, just what looked good to me on the shelf and then on the table.  That part was really fun, now I just need to get winding…

And I finished the small piece I had on the Structo loom, so I looked around for something else to weave on it.  I had been working on personal images, and I have a few in mind, but I wanted something colorful and fun, and decided to follow through on some advice I got from a member of one of the surface design organizations I belong to, just take a piece of one of your fabrics and frame it and stick it on the wall and call it art…

When this member first suggested it, I tossed it off as uninspired and lazy.  But I love these scarves I’m weaving, the color palettes are fun and refreshing, and I thought, for a fun exercise, I’d scan a portion of it, print it on silk, and then cut it apart and weave the woven fabric back together into a new fabric.  Anyway, that’s all set up and ready to go.

So what does that leave me with?  Back to the jacket that isn’t cooperating…  Meanwhile, I did finish about 60 inches of trim for the jacket, which was great since the next step was to attach the braid at the shoulders and the flap pocket trim.  When the braid came off the loom, I did what any well trained garment constructor would do, I preshrunk it by soaking it in hot water for 20 minutes.  NOTE:  Rattail bleeds…  Duh…

So the hot water turned pink, and the white part of the finished dried braid has a definitely pink cast.  Not good.  I even tried rewashing the braid with Synthrapol.  Still not good.  I kept looking at the dressform with the braid draped around it, tried all kinds of lighting, and there was nothing to be done.  The braid turned pink, and wasn’t usable.  I thought I could turn under the edges, and I actually liked the size of the braid better, and briefly thought about just using the existing braid with the edges turned under, which would render it too bulky I think.  I had already set up the inkle loom for another couple yards of braid.

So, it all boils down to doing a grand CTRL+Z in my studio, taking the jacket completely apart, fusing all the pieces before reconstructing, adjusting the width on the loom of the braid I just warped up, and reweaving the first two yards of braid, narrower, and making sure I wash/preshrink the braid when finished, in COLD water.  It may be another ten days or so before I post again, I’m not happy when I have to go all the way back to the beginning.  But I am experienced enough to know I would never have been happy, and I want this piece to be successful for teaching purposes.

Stay tuned…