Soft Sculpture Necklace

Before clay, I worked extensively in fibers; weaving, needlework, ethnic clothing design, baskets.

Some time ago, I was going through some more slides of previous work and came across one of the soft jewelry pieces I made some years ago.

The soft jewelry grew out of designing ethnic clothing.

At one point, I was heavily involved with The Children's Art Center in Norfolk VA and a the Textile Designer's Association of Virginia.

A wonderful teacher, Margot Carter Blair arrived upon our horizon and taught a great series of classes on design and application of a huge range of fibers and embellishments. Margot is a gifted and inspiring teacher. You can see her work on: http://www.softflexcompany.com/WSWrapper.jsp?mypage=spotlightdesigner_Nov07.html. Margot is currently concentrating on doing rosary workshops using bead design.

This necklace is a pendent made of a cross-stitch pattern I designed, cotton embroidery thread tassels and beaded pom-poms and wrapped cording. The length is adjustable by positioning the two loops on either side of the back section. It can remain at the shortened length or lengthened by slipping the loops over the pom-poms on either side. The natural tension of cotton upon cotton holds the adjustment in place.

One day, I will repeat the necklace, but instead of cotton, use more luxurous materials--maybe a porcelain pendent and matching beads.

I'm so glad I started to keep a photography record of my work early on. It's great to have the visual references in order to dip into them and think about new variations on old themes.

Custom Books

I love lacy fall leaves. I collect them and use an old book press like this one to flatten them for later use.

I also hoard great paper, raffia and beautiful twigs. (Rocks too, but I haven't figured out how to use them yet---maybe a cut-out with a suspended rock.........)

The cover of this book is old photograph mounting albums. I ran across a bunch of these, dismantled them and cut them to fit the pages. The pages, which aren't shown, but are beige and have the same texture as the cover, are off-cuts from a publisher.

The second book is made the same way, but I had to figure out how to attach the bare twig to the back.

The Bisque Baby in a Basket

For as long as I can remember, I've had this tiny doll in a bassinet. She must be all of 1 3/4 inches long. She's made out of colored bisque and has separate arms and legs, wired together. She's packed away in tissue paper as she has always been until I can find a dome the right size to put her in.

When my mother gave her to me, her basket had no hood. I made the one shown using strips of cane bent over and attached to the basket. The bed is lined with cross-quilted satin lining, the bottom is a tiny pillow of cotton batiste. And she has an even smaller head pillow.

Mom made a set of clothes for her and I would carefully undress her, wash her bonnet, nightgown, booties, panties, and robe; all the bedding except the outside of the bassinet. Then, I would carefully re-dress her and put her away again.

Some years ago, I decided to make her a new set of clothes. The idea started when I ran across the beautifully embroidered handkerchief that now doubles as a coverlet. It was so wonderfully made, it spurred me to take a shot at making a new bonnet and nightdress. I had been hoarding a shoebox full of antique lace--some inherited, some bought at an estate sale in Portland OR. I had taken a course in French Hand Sewing and used what I had learned to construct the new outfit. It took a while to find a needle small enough to do this.

I had some very fine batiste that I had bought while taking the course, so I was set. I'm glad I bought a whole bolt. Really fine fabric seems to be getting scarce.

I would recommend sewing in the sunlight if you are doing French Hand Sewing--especially if the work is white on white.

Later I'll post some more examples of this kind of work.

Zachary's Quilt

When Zachary, my second grandson, was born, I made him a quilt. The poem I used was one I have had in my files since I was a teenager.

It's from an obscure book, "At the Back of the Moon, 1871" written by George MacDonald, a Scottish author.

I worked out twelve spaces for the lines, drew them out in lettering on typing paper and outlined them in black pen, then set up a lightbox to transfer the letters onto bleached muslin.

Sorry for the slight distortion in the photo, the picture I have is from a quilt show. It's the only photo I have of it. The photos don't do the colors justice--fluorescent lighting in the show--the quilt is white and navy blue.

The quilt won a prize ribbon in crib quilts. Can't remember whether it was a first place or second place??? Oh, well, not important. Who it went to is important.

The Loom Story

Many years ago, I bought this antique loom. It's totally hand made--actually hand hewn from yellow pine. All the wood has a wonderful patina, warn smooth by hands and use.

Here's what it looks like all assembled--I finally found the old slide of it set up in a corner of a living room.

It's in sections now, stored in various places around my house. The largest pieces are the two upright pieces that have the arms on the side to hold the counterbalance beam at the top.

The warp beam is a modified log with holes bored at intervals. The rod that serves as a break can be inserted into the holes, looped through the rope that holds it from rotating (see the right hand side of the loom) Quite effective, really.

The reddish colored heddles are made of string tied in linen thread. They work just as well as wire heddles; actually even better because they have a bit of forgiving 'give'. It's not hard to replace a broken one, just tie up another thread.

The original reed is made of thin slivers of bamboo held down with strong cording wrapped around two round rods that measure the width of the interior of the loom. I still have it. It looks like the cord has been shellacked to give it strength. I'm sure the bamboo worked fine as a reed, but some of it was missing, so I inserted a metal reed in it's place.

Not much to the tie-up or treadles here. I suppose I could add two more harnesses and a couple more treadles and have a 4 treadle counterbalance, but I was happy to do rag rugs and tapestry type weaving on this old beauty.

The cloth beam has a wooden feed dog and a rocker brake on the side. (Not showing in this photograph.) I understand this kind of brake is a Scandinavian style one. The rhythm of the weaving and heft of the beater was a real work-out.

I bought this loom from a lady who was sitting, spinning wool in an old mill in Southern Missouri. The mill was open for visitors, although there was hardly anyone around. Just on an impulse, I asked her if she knew of anyone who had an old loom for sale. She said she had an old one at her house that she used to use, but hadn't for quite some time. I can't remember if she said it came from the mill or out of an old barn, but in any case, I was afraid the trip to look at it would probably not pan out. Since it hadn't been used in some time, it was probably an old wreck.

She volunteered to take up to her house to look at it. It was set up in a spare bedroom. I could hardly hide my excitement when I saw it. I asked her if she knew anything about where it had come from, etc. She didn't have much information, but wanted to know more about just Who I was after I asked her how much she wanted for it. I got the distinct impression that she just wasn't going to sell this loom to the first person to come down the pike.....

And after about a half hour or more (these things take time, you know) talking with her and my giving her almost my whole family tree, she decided I was 'okay' I guess, because we agreed on a price and began dis-assembling the thing to load it into our car. I wanted to know and paid very close attention to how it all went together so I wouldn't be stumped when I wanted to set it up. Our family were transferring across country and I would be setting up the loom again some weeks from the time I bought it.

All this and I hadn't even learned how to weave at the time. But, it's one of those things that I felt in my mind, I already knew how to weave. It wasn't hard to do on this loom--it's so simple to set up and use. I made rag rugs and simple tapestries on it.

A few years later I was able to take an intensive weaving course in London. And, on returning to the States, bought an 8 harness table loom to make more complicated pieces.

String Quilt

Making a string quilt is an interesting exercise in laying down color.

It's a great way to use up lots and lots of scraps also.

It's also a totally different sewing approach, or at least in this instance.

Since the sewing is on the bias, I decided to avoid possible problems with stretching by doing this quilt the Georgia Bonesteel Lap-Quilting way: One complete block at a time, then joining the blocks with lattice, both front and back.

Each color is laid down over a full block of backing and stuffing using the sew and flip technique, so piecing the quilt pieces goes pretty fast.*

The down-side of these kinds of quilts is they don't lay flat or in the same way that a quilted whole backed quilt does--they tend to rumple and just be more 'double-jointed' than traditional quilts.

*I also made several bags to store and protect the antique needlepoint standing frame I bought at auction in London. I made the previously mentioned needlepoint chair seat on this frame and when I finally get to the second seat cover, I'll probably haul it out again to use.**

**I have a real weakness for antique sewing tools and 'saved' another table top needlework frame a few years ago just because I knew what it was and didn't want it to go into some trash-heap or wind up at a charity shop.

Now, who in the world needs two needlework frames?

Blue Quilt

This is an early blue quilt. The photo is from a quilt show.

Before I learned to make half triangles the easy way with sewing large pieces together then cutting the small blocks out.

Before I began to think in more detail about overall design and layout.

It's just a bunch of random, scrappy blocks. It still survives years of washing.....and it needs a good going over and a new binding. Do I invest the time? I'm pondering it.