Pictureless on Long Island

I had such a great week of fiber activities to blog about last week…but didn’t take any pictures. What was I thinking? I had the camera with me but neglected to use it. Not on the fiberarts field trip to Manhattan with my very pregnant friend Deborah---Sullivan Street tour of Purl Patchwork and Purl Soho yarns, Global Table, or on to lunch at Le pain Quotidian, or up to City Quilter for a very interesting talk by Donna Wilder, Free Spirit fabrics founder. Great! No pictures! People talking about making things all day long. No pictures!



Went to a meeting of the Spinning Study Group of Long Island in Smithtown, in an historic barn--- 50 or so people, all ages, arrived to set up their spinning apparatus, roving, yarn and projects! Everyone was so willing to share information about their wheels and fibers---I’m joining that bunch! Can’t wait for the next meeting---but once again, no camera.



April will be better. I won't forget to feed the blog!

log cabin or cabin fever?

I'm accustomed to sending pictures from my window to my family on the opposite coast to confirm or deny our weather as reported on the national news. So here's the grey and drippy weather report from the windows overlooking the Peconic River.




That monochromatic stuff going on outside inspired me to work on this multi-colored chenille piece. Based on the traditional quilt block, Log Cabin, I thought it would be a witty topping for a handmade twig stool, get it? Log Cabin---twig stool! Humor aside, it's another multi-color, technicolor, no colorway approach so I can use up all my commercially dyed flannel. What remains are the centers of the log cabin block, a red square to symbolize a chimney, at least that's what I remember about it. Spiraling strip or back and forth strip? I'll throw it in the washer and see how the red centers look and then finish it up on this grey, drippy day!

Log Jam

Some might be aware that one of my other obsessions is logs and/or twigs. A few years back I purchased a number of ebay footstools and one of my favorite finds was a stool made from a log. I envisioned it with a chenille bark cushion, taffeta ribbons...



More log items followed... bolsters, more stool covers. Who doesn't love their logs soft and huggable?



So when I was contemplating an entry for Lark Book's 500 Tables last month, I turned to logs for inspiration, naturally. I started two tables about 2 weeks before the submission was due (good planning). I was felled by the flu for about a week, I rallyed and completed one of the tables for the photo and got the entry in the mail. Pphew! (Table #2 is in a dormant state, as yet unfinished.)

This is how Table #1 log table happened! I laminated layers of 2 inch think dense foam for the logs and then I whacked away at them with one of my favorite tools, the electric carving knife. I stitched together the bark fabric by layering flannel fabric, stitching on the bias, slashing through all layers, then stitching the stacked bias strips onto a backing, then finally washing and drying it. I wrapped the bark fabric around the whacked foam logs and hand stitch them closed or secured them with velcro. (The pictures below are the ones I take along the way just to record the process for myself and to get a different view of the piece through the camera lens).





Table #1 was tentatively put together the night before I had to photograph it. The next morning I couldn't balance it when I tried to position it in front of the seamless paper. A few hours later, sanity restored, I solved the problem by flipping the base log upside down!



We'll see how Lark responds to this soft log table.

Ta Da!

There's a category of my ongoing work that I haven't exposed on my limited posts so far. Time for my shirred surface/chenille textile work.

Many years ago I saw an article in Sew...???? on making a chenille vest from layered voile, stitched in channels, slashed and washed, probably authored by Nannette Holmberg. I haven't been able to find the article since, but I liked the idea of the technique. I didn't have any voile fabrics to work with but I did have brightly colored flannels. So I stacked them up, stitched in channels, cut and washed the sample and was instantly hooked on the raucus results.





I made piles of pillow-size squares from assorted flannel solids, prints and plaids. I loved the density of the surface and the complexity of the colors. The pillow size samples grew to bed size pieces to footstool covers to chair covers and stand alone soft sculpture. I have a large body of this work, due in part to it's bulk, but also to my obsessiveness.

In January I received a notice from Lark Books that a chenille piece I had submitted last spring was accepted for the soon-to-be-published, 500 Chairs. (Yay! Insert Cuba Gooding Jr dance here.) Previews of that as May approaches. Within days of that notice, emails from Lark reminded me to submit work for possible inclusion in next years' 500 series---what else but, 500 Tables. I worked myself into a tizzy to complete a table and came down with the flu, but I got it submitted. More about this later too.

The flannel is flying, flannel is taking over everything...so it's time to post the evidence. How about a rug I started last year? I resigned myself to the obvious colors that flannel is merchandised in the stores in (I can't make myself use too many pastels---you'll see that). My strategy is use all colors so the piece doesn't have an obvious "colorway". It's not complete yet, maybe a few more bands of color and then back into the washing machine and dryer for a final fluff up.

not joining YA

Hi! My name is Susan and I’m a yarnaholic! Or at least I thought I was until I saw some extensive yarn stashes on Ravelry.com and Flickr.com. I’m somewhat relieved to see that I really am not a candidate for YA. Yeh, but isn't denial the first sign of...whatever!

Sock knitting has gotten in the way of, well, real life. That doesn’t mean I’m a yarnaholic. Tax preparations swamp my desk, but until I can't see my laptop screen that’s not a problem. Yesterday two more knitting books arrived from Amazon, I'm sure that's not a sign of .... Anyway, I knit my first sock in the last week and I documented it’s progress for my Mom. She was my measure for knitting abilities as she had been a knitting instructor decades ago and she was not surprised by my sock pictures. For years I thought I was incapable of knitting socks. I found proof of that in my archival yarn stash (in your what?). Two skeins of teal blue sportweight yarn that I bought 20 years ago and had cast on stitches on a set of double-pointed needles and then abandoned it. I just didn’t get it.





Socks are a revelation to me now! One, two skeins of some hand-dyed yarn and you're ready to go! Right? Not exactly. You need three more sets of double-pointed bamboo needles or at least I did. And you need new stitch holders and then markers too. Next came Ann Budd’s book Getting Started Knitting Socks to bolster my confidence. (What obsessive behavior?) Finally I’d run out of things to buy to launch the socks. I had to actually start knitting the socks, though not without consulting a knittinghelp video for the new method of casting on required! My lovely skeins of Koigu KPPPM #100 are now my first sock (and probably the second sock). I’m intrigued by how you shape a sock and the possibilities for design seem endless. Not to mention the really cool yarn one will have to buy for all those endless designs! Oh no I’m not a …

hearts in season

I've been stitching a pile o' silk hearts!

Heart sachets have been a constant in my Lavender Trifles repertoire and with the recent opening of my etsy shop, I'll be able to present them "in season"!

Lavender is such a nostalgic fragrance, it naturally lends itself to antique textiles. My sachets were first inspired by antique Crazy quilts saturated with embroidery, pieced in unusual color combinations and full of quirky imagery.

When I start on a group of sachets, I rely on the palette of intense colors that the dupioni silks come in and ever-expanding collection of embroidery floss to guide the way. Most of the time I have no plan or pattern for piecing, other than using up scraps. Once I have pieced the fabric, I use a minimum of embroidery stitches on the silk's slubby surface.

One thing leads to another and there are always ways to stray from the original intention. Now there's a pile o' natural linen hearts with ricrac and embroidery in progress. And with a work table full of embroidery threads I'll have to clean it up with my punchneedle and whip up some buttons! But that's another post.

Sachets. Fill em, shoot em and upload them before Valentine's day has come and gone.

Is it foamy vs felt?

In a recent copy of Selvedge magazine there was an short article about Pia Wallen. I have liked her simple, sewn, industrial felt forms since I first saw them. It reminded me that her work inspired the "foamy" gift packages I've been sewing for a couple of years ago.

I was wrapping some mundane birthday presents for my husbands special day when I got the inspiration to sew the foamy sheets together to make a more interesting gift wrapping. I bought two packets of the large Foamy sheets and then just started zigzagging sheets together on my sewing machine, cutting edges with decorative scissors and folding and restitching to form large envelopes or this year, large bucket-y structures for more bulky gifts like sweatpants. Paper punches worked to create slots for ribbon threading....

I get such a good response to the foamy wrappers when I give a gift, that I thought maybe I should really figure out how to get better stitching results on my Bernina sewing machine. Using a regular foot or even a walking foot on my late model Bernina (1001) does not produce even stitches and it's difficult to feed under the presser foot. My local source for Bernina accessories suggested that I get a teflon coated foot or a roller foot which would cost $52 -$80. So I'm hoping to find an online source for this antique foot or maybe I should just convert to industrial felt? Hmmm. I'll attack both fronts.