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Textile Crazy: A Few Handiwork Items

Dec. 30, 2016. Looking back over 2016, I see I didn't write up any artsy activities of my own since July 1, when I finished my last doll. So here's a quick review.

Belt pouch. (photo above) My 20-year-old belt pouch finally bit the dust, so I hand-stitched one with felted wool, giving myself compartments for phone, earbuds, notebook and pen, plus a small extra. There's a little crookedness to it, but that's the charm of handmade, right?

Banners. (below) Thought I would stitch small banners for my porch posts and let them, you know, weather in the wind. But they wound up taking quite a bit of work so I wasn't ready to surrender them to the elements. The first one used my indigo shibori (tie-dye) cloth as background, with appliques from my growing stash of natural-dye fabric (avocado pits, dandelions, etc.). It represents earth, air (sky), wind, and fire (sun). The "roots" below are big African glass beads and I made the twine above and below from strips of fabric scraps. The whole thing is heavily quilted with tiny running stitches.

The second banner (below) is more random. They are both hanging in our bathroom.

Can't decide if the one below is done yet. Magnets hold it to the side of the refrigerator. It started out with teaching myself to do ribbon-embroidered flowers with fabric strips. Then I appliqued Dot and Dash, encircled them with my twine, added an appliqued checkerboard, then stitched that together with some hand-dyed cotton. Sweet. (There's another "work in progress" around here, but I can't find it.)

Upcycled jewelry. Don't ask me why Jim has a collection of Victorian and 20th c. jewelry, but he does and it's just sitting around contributing nothing. It's too good to break into bits for shabby chic jewelry collages, but not really valuable. So here (below) I decided to upcycle a peacock brooch by pinning it to some wool and embroidering around it. The jury is still out on whether this is a worthwhile artistic activity.

Dyes. It seems whenever I'm restless, I get out the dye. A blizzard early this month got me back snow-dying some new cotton dish towels to replace the sad things we've been using for decades. Then I decided to send for some natural dye extracts, as a respite from trying to eke color from winter kitchen scraps. Below are the warm results on wool. Left to right: cutch, lac, and madder. The bottom layer is the official simmered-for-2-hours results. For the top layer I poured the leftover dye into mason jars, with more wool and left it overnight, for paler results. For the lac and madder, I overdyed former dye disasters, so I got an interesting multi-color result. There are no failures in dyeing -- failures are always just prologue to the next experiment.

I'm restless now to know how my visual art will develop in 2017. I pulled out my doll-making books, ordered some polymer clay, assembled my jewelry tools... I want to push myself to learn some new and difficult skills, but have to be ready to face that bitch, Learning Curve.

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