Tag: funky yarn

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Woven, Not Stitched

Yes indeed, I found the loom that I mentioned in my last post, and I remembered enough about it to start a woven… something:

I’m not sure what else to say about this weaving adventure at this point.  I’m stuck, I don’t remember how to secure the loose ends on both the warp and weft.  The loom came with an instructional DVD, and I need to watch it again to figure out how to finish what I started.  It has been unseasonably warm here, so I have not wanted to sit and watch, I have been picking daffodils, pulling weeds and sitting out on the porch with some hand stitching.  As for what my plans are for the weaving, I am envisioning using the pieces as embellishment appliques.  I could use a few small pieces separately, or put together several strips to make one bigger piece and use them in a fabric collage.  Up next on my stay-at-home punch list, sewing with candy wrappers.  Curious?  Find out all about it on Tuesday.

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Discovering Buried Treasures

Why didn’t I do this sooner?  By necessity, a vast amount of my textile art stash is stuffed in boxes.  As a result, I often forget about what I cannot see.  This morning, I went through my box of funky yarns and reacquainted myself with all of the wonderful colors and textures, and what they could add to my collages.  So, I spent a good bit of time freeing them from their hideaway and cut one or two yards of each one.  Next,  I hung the pieces on a vintage mini drying rack so that I have a sampling of my yarns easily accessible and ready to use.

These yarns are great for building up texture, outlining shapes, weaving, and making yarn “lace.”  Here, I am machine couching a line of eyelash yarn to an artist trading card using a zigzag stitch.

Using water soluble stabilizer, a thick “lace” can be made by sewing yarns in a grid pattern, than soak away the stabilizer and use the resulting openwork as an embellishment piece.  One of these days, I’d like to make some woven strips on a tabletop rigid heddle loom that I have.  I’ve used pin looms to create funky yarn squares that go into my fabric collages.  Now that I have more time, I should dig out that loom and start something with it.  Check back later this week to see if I stick to this goal, or uncover something else…

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Shopping Spree

I just returned from my annual trip to the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo, and as you can see, I had a lot of fun!

The best find of the day was four back issues of Uppercase Magazine for $2.00 each from a local guild’s used book sale booth.  I really must subscribe to the magazine one of these days, though it is quite expensive for a quarterly magazine – however, if you make something, or want to be more creative, it is well worth the price.  Uppercase is an eclectic blend of artist profiles, inspiring ideas collections of interesting vintage items and histories of craft, design and manufacturing processes.  Highly recommended!

Other stuff that I couldn’t resist: a complete collection of House of Embroidery perle cotton threads, a Dia de los Muertos decorated spray bottle, a set of Tsukineko inks and supplies, a funky sewing machine clock, a thread stand from Superior Threads, several small packs of funky yarns that I have never seen before and a few more yards of fabric that will go perfectly with some collage series of mine.

Check back to see what I have done with some of my new “toys.”  I am taking the inks to my art journaling group tonight, and I will have more to say about the House of Embroidery threads later in the week.

 

 

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Unfinished Business

I still have not made any progress on the pieces for fast approaching deadlines.  The 3-D entry is not going to happen, at least not for its intended show.  I’ll keep working on it and use it for some other show entry.  I have not made a single stitch yet on the two Upcycle entries.  I’ve simply allowed myself to be distracted by other ongoing projects, so at least I am getting back into a creative groove.  One of the things that I have made progress on are some of my mini quilt collages:

The fabrics in these three “sketches” are scraps of my own hand dyes in the “Madri Gras” color blend.  The one on the far left was stamped with antique wallpaper pattern stamps and acrylic paint, then embellished with funky yarns.  The center one has strips of silk scraps to create a very skewed frame to the composition, then I seed stitched all over to secure the top two layers before pillowcase binding it.  On the far right, trial with using embroidery stitches to create textural interest in the solid colored shapes.  I still need do some final machine quilting in all of them.

I have no idea what I will work on this weekend, and I think that I am going to scale back to posting once a week until I get some issues worked out with the back end of this site.