I've been busy all year creating new work and pushing my technical skills and creativity. First, I had a busy summer with festivals, "weaving in public" demonstrations, introducing weaving to children with 4 different loom types, etc. You may have seen me at local shows in Tacoma and Everett. Additionally in the background I've been preparing to participate in an exhibit at the Washington Center for Performing Arts. The WCPA hosts a quilt show every winter as part of their annual gallery schedule and this year they considered adding in new voices into the mix and I was honored to be asked to participate. I currently have 7 pieces up in the exhibit which runs through late January 2025.
The pieces that are in the exhibit are from a grant project that I recently completed. All are textile/fiber pieces but their final form differs. I have some small quilts on hanging rods, 2D framed works and also some quilted and handwoven apparel.
Techniques used ranged from traditional quilting techniques to embroidery to handweaving, to needle turn applique, and clothing construction. In contrast to a quilt which is usually smooth to the touch (except maybe the seams) these pieces are richly textured with yarn, handmade rope, embroidery, dense quilting stitches and layers of "poof" created by layering of batting between layers of the projects. I wanted to create texture that was so rich that it could be sensed without physically touching the pieces. When I showed these pieces at public events as part of my grant, I utilized the library meeting rooms (versus hanging pieces on the wall in a gallery) and displayed the pieces on tables, on coat racks, etc. Coats were allowed to be held and tried on. Pieces could be picked up, turned over, bent/rolled, etc.
I also experimented with smaller and smaller pieces of fabric and yarn remnants and worked out a satisfactory way to create new fabric from these pieces that are too small for any quilting projects. You can do this by sandwiching tiny pieces of yarn and fabric between a layer of quilt batting and a layer of tulle (ie. ballerina dancer skirt material) and then using quilting stitches to contain the scraps. It didn't surprise me that fabric scraps were useful in this process but I tried using my waste from my weaving projects and they also work great. Weaving naturally creates "warp waste" at the end of each project so it's not uncommon for me to have several large grocery bags of yarn waste in my studio, sorted by color families. Sometimes these get spun into new yarn but now I have an additional use for them and the end results are so satisfying.
Here's a sample of the "fabric" I made with this scrap technique. The blue fabric with holes is from a blouse, and it has been laid on top of this self-made fabric. I then used needle turn applique to turn the edges of the blue fabric under. The little white scrappy bubbles are as puffy and textural as they look and add a neat dimension to what would otherwise be a flat project.
On the right below (orange/brown tones), here's another example of the typ of fabric I made with the layer of quilt
batting, then scraps, then tulle, then stitching. After completing this process I was then able to utilize this circular piece of new fabric just like any other, and I put it within a square quilt block.
As you can see I'm having fun playing with texture, scale, dimension, embellishments, manipulating fibers, etc. It's been a project of intense exploration, lots of time consuming handwork and lack of sleep. Both the grant and the exhibition pushed me creatively this year and I think I'll see echoes of these projects in my future work for a long time.
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