I woke up early, the intense wind made the house creak, and the eerie moaning of the bare trees, brushing against the house, made it pretty clear I was up for good. So I jumped into the day, starting the morning routine, empty dishwasher, make breakfast, reload dishwasher, tidy up kitchen, mail piles, newspapers, the house was quiet except for the wind, which I understand topped 50 miles an hour and killed three people in NJ, everyone in my family left for work or school and I was blissfully alone. 🙂
I continued my routine, cleaning the bathrooms, mentally making a list of everything I needed to get done today, water plants, call my supplier and order pattern paper for the California conference, get tickets to the show I altered the 27 dresses for, fill an internet order for interfacing and get that shipped, toss in the laundry, three loads total (my goodness teenage kids can go through clothing…) make an appointment for my annual GYN exam and mammogram, AND, make a very long overdue appointment to get my hair cut. You know how when you pass by a mirror and do a double take and it isn’t good? Well it was time. And with the conference coming up in sunny California, I needed a haircut, badly!
All that got taken care of, and I had a scheduled lunch date with the Thursday Philosophy Club, my group of friends, teachers, we’ve been doing this little Thursday routine since my daughter was in elementary school. In the middle of our eggplant rollatini pizza and arrugula salad, the power went out. We kept on eating, at least our food was finished cooking. It was adventurous when I had to use the ladies room, making my way to the back of the pizza place in the dark with a flashlight. We finally left the restaurant, I had intended to do a bit of grocery shopping, but with no power, I didn’t feel like getting to the register and finding out that the charge machines were down. Fortunately the power came back on in time for my haircut! 🙂
I needed to ship a garment for a faculty exhibit at the Newark Museum for the spring season of workshops, so I decided on the very dramatic Peacock piece, which I did back in 2005, since they hadn’t seen it at the museum, and knowing the space, I thought it would be perfect. Plus garments like these don’t do any good hanging in my closet in cleaner bags. It isn’t like it is something I’m going to wear to the next social gathering. There are pieces I make that I really wear, and there are pieces I make that I do because I want to push the envelope a little bit, and make a spash in an exhibit or on the runway, and a conservative, very wearable little jacket like I’m about to make for Project 5, just doesn’t always fit the bill.
So I raced it over to the shipped, boxed it, and off it went, I’ll see it back at the end of the season. This piece was actually assembled from leftover pieces of a series of production plain weave fabrics I wove back in the 1980’s. I saved all the scraps from the garments I made for craft fairs, and sometimes I’ll even find unsold work still in a box in the attic, and I’ll cut that up as well. Here is another piece I did that way, cutting up old work or scraps from old yardage (I use to weave 30 yard bolts of fabric when I did craft fairs, that’s a lot of scraps). I wrote about the process of piecing the handwoven fabric using a fusible knit backing, in the first article I wrote for Handwoven Magazine back in December of 2000. The article was called Slice and Dice, and you can access a PDF of the article by clicking here.
If I never wove again, there is enough work/scraps in my attic to keep me busy for a long time. I’ve had family clean out closets, and give me back some of the old dated garments they bought from me at craft fairs, they can’t bear to give the garments away, but giving them back to me somehow will make sure they live on. I enjoy reworking, giving life to something that just isn’t working anymore, style, size, whatever, as long as there is still a trace of an interlacement, handwoven fabric can live indefinitely!
Maybe next time I’m set up to do a photo shoot, I should photograph some of the interesting things that have found their way back to me, back in the 1980’s, I didn’t record everything I made, just what I needed to produce 5 good slides to get me into shows…