There isn't a whole lot of art happening in my life at the moment, but I did manage to finish a gift project this weekend -- one of the silk throws I mentioned forever ago. The idea of fringe went by the wayside in favor of a very simple and minimal row of pearl nuggets stitched onto each side. The silk velvet proved true to its reputation -- hard to work with but so incredibly soft and seductive. The challenge is that the silk velvet has a loose weave and a tendency to "grow" while the silk dupioni does not, so you end up with more fabric on one side than the other no matter how carefully you've cut.
I think a take-no-prisoners approach to staystitching on the velvet might help, and I'll try that on the next one. This one is for my friend Angela and her new husband, who live in Germany. Angela is an expert belly dancer and one of the people who inspired me to take classes, which is another post for another time.
I also came across something else I thought might be interesting to share. Here's the backstory: In the summer of 2001, I applied for an editorial job at Threads magazine. This was before they changed over to strictly garment-sewing technique. I got an interview, and booked a flight for . . . you guessed it . . . September 11, 2001. The flight didn't take off, of course, but I was the last person outbound from Denver whose luggage they took before everything shut down, so I was in the airport for many hours trying to get my luggage back, with thousands of others in complete shock and confusion.
Though I did end up flying out for the interview a couple of weeks later, by then the economic downturn had begun and everybody's plans had changed, so I didn't get the job. But to get to the point . . . they had asked me to throw together some pages of images and fabric to show them how I worked visually and how I might put together a page.
I created five or six of these; I guess now we'd call them mini-mood boards. I love the mood board concept -- it was a great exercise to create these.
So I found my Threads mood boards the other day -- here's one, and I'll photograph the rest and put them up. These have fabric swatches layered over collaged paper images -- this one has a narrow swatch of lavender silk along the left side. The lower image is a postcard of a painting by the magnificent Wolf Kahn.
I keep a collage box full of pages torn from magazines -- often just for the colors, as these were, or pictures of clothes for the "style file" -- old postcards, cancelled stamps, maps, all that sort of thing. It's full of enough ideas and idea triggers for a lot of work. I know the current thinking is anti-clutter, and this box would be clutter to a lot of people, but it's hidden treasure and inspiration to me.
Hi thank you for sharing about silk throws, I love the design of the one you did for your friends!
Posted by: silk wedding flowers online | October 01, 2009 at 02:08 PM