It would help explain how I wove the image in the previous blog, if I included the draft. The peach strips of weft would represent the silk strips of the image. When you carefully beat them into place, they slide down to cover the plain weave ground underneath. Hope this helps.
A lovely quiet Saturday, about 6 inches of snow fell yesterday, and another 3 or so are due in tonight. The studio is warm, and my children are out, so it is just my husband and me puttering around the house. These are the easy days, I cherish them when I get them, because tomorrow could be completely different.
I spent some time cleaning up the studio. That is a really important part of my creative experience, to organize and clear away the surfaces, cover machines not in use, carefully return things to their proper places. I’m not so distracted by clutter which can take me away from the task at hand.
I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon working on a piece on my table loom, which is almost finished, using a Theo Moorman threading. I weave about a quarter inch of ground fabric, then lay in on top a thin strip of silk, and hold it down with poly sewing thread which is warped in with the cotton ground. The strip is part of a childhood photograph I printed on 10mm silk Habotai, which comes on a 10′ roll, pretreated for ink jet ink, and mounted on paper for easy transport through the printer. I got this from Dharma Trading. By running two or three lengths of this silk, 23″ long, I could print a much larger image, since I’m stripping it anyway, it doesn’t matter if it is in two or three pieces.
This is a larger version of one I sold, called Big Sister. The photo is from around 1957, of my younger sister and me, caught in an intimate moment. The photo above is the smaller version.
It is days like this that make me love living in the northeast. The snow fell, steady, it was very gray outside, but the earth was covered with a blanket of beautiful clean snow, well maybe not the earth, but my little corner of northern NJ. School had been canceled and all of my daughter’s after school activities, my husband was able to work from home, we cranked up the wood stove, and I disappeared into my studio. I worked on the ginger jars, late last night I decided to take the one I made yesterday apart, and rework the top. If I stitched around the top first, and then assembled the sides, the top would be smoother. So I redid the jar from yesterday, and made four more. I think they will make terrific colorful gifts.
In the latest issue of Handwoven, the same one where I read Syne Mitchell’s column about creating a blog, Madelyn van der Hoogt’s letter from the editor talked about making resolutions to do more of something, like weaving, but before one can do that, one has to plan and prepare the warp and then set up the loom. It struck a chord because I need to do all the pattern prep work before I begin to make garments from the projects listed in previous blogs. I have three more garment projects on the table which I will describe in future posts, but for now, my more immediate problem is the constantly changing body I live in. Let me digress.
I spent five years on Tamoxifen, after my breast cancer diagnosis. Having been thrown instantly into menopause by the chemotherapy, my body changed rapidly from a premenopausal 46 year old, into a post menopausal body, losing height, and adding about 25 pounds. I kept that weight for many years. No matter how hard I tried, I seemed stuck at this new weight, and this whole new, very different body. Missing a few parts, but hey, at least I’m alive. I’ve been off Tamoxifen about a year now, and I am amazed at how my body is changing, every so slowly back to my original pre cancer shape, slimmer hips, about 10 pounds lighter, which sounds wonderful I know, but besides all my clothes not fitting anymore, because I had to buy all knew ones in the last few years, my dressform needs to be completely refit. The last few garments I made using this form came out much larger than I expected, once I tried them on myself. So I took some measurements, and to my shock, I needed to reshape the hips and drop 3 inches off the form.
Taking advantage of my 16 year old daughter home from school for the snow day, I peeled her away from her computer, and got her to help me refit the muslin cover on my Uniquely You Dress Form. If you have fluctuating weight, this is a great form, since all you have to do is rip open the seams and refit the cover and the form will change with you.
While my daughter helped me fit the cover, she poked around the studio, always a dangerous thing, and got intrigued by the ginger jars I was making out of the shibori papers. She dug through my stash, and my library, and found the book by Linda Johansen on Fabric Boxes. She found a Chinese Food type container to make out of a couple of bandanas. She ran to her room, and brought out her collection of bandanas, and decided to try to make a fabric box with two she had with a breast cancer theme, from a Susan Komen run we attended back in 2003. Two of us in this small studio is something to see. We managed not to fall over each other, I worked on the cutting table while she sewed, and the photo above shows her finished box. I was quite proud of her, and I think she was proud of herself, and for about four hours today, she didn’t play on the computer…
And my dressform now fits my body, so I can start working out some of the garment ideas I have for project 1-3.
Today was a detour day. By that I mean, all that I had planned to do in the studio got pushed aside for other more important things that life has a way of
throwing you. I started the morning by having a colonoscopy. What, you may ask has this to do with weaving? As a breast cancer survivor, diagnosed at age 46, and having just buried a close friend in her 50’s with colon cancer, I am a firm believer that everything in your studio will wait while you do the important screenings that can make the difference between another day in the studio and, well, lets just say for now, I will have more days in the studio. Last month the oncologist gave me a clean bill of health, and my colon is perfect and good for another 5 years. So if you are putting off getting a routine exam, as annoying and cumbersome as they can be, think of all the things you might never get to in the studio… Make it your New Year’s Resolution.
All was not lost, I did manage to do a prototype for a couple of Christmas gifts I have to make for some good friends. I’ve done this technique with scraps of handwoven fabric. There are a number of books out, many by Linda Johansen, on making fabric vases, bowls, boxes, etc. They were the technique du jour in the quilting circles a few years ago.
Last spring, I had done a series of papers, folded and dip dyed, so they came out sort of shibori looking. I wanted to do something special with them. So I dug out my Flexi Firm non fusible thick stiff interfacing, and some Wonder Under, and traced a pattern for a ginger jar from one of Linda Johansen’s books. I fused the paper to the Flexi Firm, with Wonder Under, and then started stitching around all the pieces with a zig-zag, catching in a satin cord on the edges. Once they were all stitched, I assembled them into a star sort of shape, and then hand sewed them into the form of the jar. I’m not completely happy with the top edge, I may try to add beads or something, I’ll see what I have in my stash.
