Red Thread Studio

The Vest of Time

As promised, here are pictures of some of the vests I used to make back in the early 1990s. At the time I was working for etown and hanging out with all the coolest musicians in town, and Paul Shaffer on the David Letterman show had made loud vests trendy, so I made these for some friendsMy friend Betsy had a fantastic fabric store that kept me supplied and inspired, and I was finally a little bit settled after living in Chicago for several years and then going to California for a year while my father was terminally ill. I was sewing a lot. I really could never do production sewing; what I enjoyed was designing something that was right for that particular person.

I would make very different and more sophisticated design choices now (I hope) but these were enormous fun to make, and they were right for the time.

 
 
 

 

And this last one is my talented friend Steve wearing one of my vests, back in 1993ish. He looks exactly the same today. Don't we all?

I'd write more but I have deadlines to meet, and I have been both acupunctured and physical-therapied in the last day and I'm tired! More soon.

Jackson, Japan, and MissElaineous Things

Okay . . . another week has gone by without a new post. I am really trying not to say "I'm overwhelmed," and instead say, "I'm managing everything in my wonderful life with ease and joy," but I'm still in a quandary over which activities and commitments to release and which to keep. This blog, as much as I love it and want to make much MORE of it, not less, is on the bubble, as those Hollywood types say.

Back at the ranch, a lot happened this week. Days ago, I bookmarked this great interview at All The Rage with Deborah Landis, the new holder of the David C. Copley chair for the study of costume design at UCLA. She has very interesting things to say about the difference between costume design and fashion design, and the presence of narrative and stories in what we wear. Landis's chair is being endowed with a $6 million grant to develop costume design studies at the university.

Tangential but interesting, at the time that I read it: Landis designed Michael Jackson's iconic red Thriller jacket. A week ago I would have written, "remember that jacket?" and now, of course, we've all been reminded of it.

So the week was an interesting example of how the media oversaturate us at times like this (you could almost hear them say, great, we don't have to do any hard analysis to unanswerable questions about things like Iran and health care reform for at least three days). Still, this blog is about art, craft, cloth and culture, and all of these are referenced in Jackson's story. This, by fashion writer Guy Trebay, is a fascinating look at his ability to create an image and the ways that image intersected with pop culture.

Elsewhere -- for those who think about selling or monetizing a sewing or craft business, Kathleen Fasanella of Fashion Incubator has a very interesting series of posts on this, including definitions of handmade and manufactured as they apply to a commercial enterprise. There are telling comments as well; some people actually daring to call attention to the poor quality of some of the "handmade nation/DIY" frenzy. Yay.

Finally, links for the artists and lovers of Japanese textiles,. First, and I think Jude has mentioned this as well, Sri Threads has an amazing series on botanical dyer Sometsukasa Yoshioka. Stephen is up to Post #9, on the color red. These are a must-read if you love color and the Japanese aesthetic. Most people probably think of indigo when word-associating color and Japan, but there's much more to it -- a masterful legacy of natural dyeing and fluency in the language of color. This is from Post #8, on the color pink:

Yoshioka talks about the importance of color in the Heian Period, and here is why:  courtly dress at this time was codified and was tied to the seasons: as the seasons changed, so must one’s costume, and a lady at court was meant to dress to reflect the season, and her reflection of the season had to be both personal and poetic.  She did this using layers of colored robes, from 12 to 20 of them: the way she layered the colored robes and they way the layers were displayed at her costume’s sleeves told a color story and showed how the lady was interpreting the season.

Here’s the thing: in Heian Japan, there were four seasons, then there were 24 sub-seasons, then there were 72 sub-sub seasons, so every five days the courtly lady needed to change her costume so she embodied the natural changes around her!

I also discovered The Ardent Thread, a new-to-me blog by an expert on Japanese textiles, surface design and stitching techniques. Author Carol also sells vintage Japanese fabrics at KimonoMomo.com (sales are made through an Etsy shop). Here's one of her vintage fabric packages:

As for me, I'm working on some machine sewing, still painting my Persian floral designs, and still working on handstitching a big shisha/beads/stitching piece, which does have some vintage kimono fabric in it, shown below. This is proving to be a very slow cloth - but it's always good to have some handstitching available -- for example, for times when you're mesmerized by CNN's wall-to-wall coverage of a celebrity death, and thinking about the time you turned on the TV and saw that electrifying moonwalk for the first time, and all the years that have gone by since then.

Here's more of the piece, which has grown and taken on a life of its own that I no longer seem to be in control of (much like my own life; let's conclude that control is overrated):

That's all for now. See you soon.

Sweethearts of the Rodeo

A friend of mine was joking about her taste for country music, and it reminded me that I've not written much about western wear. Country-and-western clothing is a textile art form all its own, especially when it was executed by masters like Nudie the Rodeo Tailor.  After all, what are our indigenous North American textile traditions? We've got Amish quilts, Navajo blankets and weaving, Hawaiian shirts, and yes, western wear.

my boots

When I first came to Colorado, I had a musical mentor who taught me about traditional country music and about Gram Parsons, the cosmic American cowboy himself. Naturally I started noticing the textiles that went with the music, and cool girls like Emmylou and the earliest iteration of the Dixie Chicks who were wearing them. My appetite for kitsch isn't quite what it used to be, but I still have a few pieces I love, including this 1940s shirt made of wool gabardine - it's very fitted, as might be expected from the "hollywood" label, so it makes for a very stylish vintage look. I think the buttons are not the originals.

And then there's the cowboy shirt I made back in the early 90s in Chicago, very sloooowly, with hand-beaded fringe, emroidery and applique. I wasn't brave enough to try smile pockets at the time. Folkwear has a pattern for very traditional western-style shirts with instructions for smile pockets, if you want to try your hand at it.

 

 

And this is what remains of a vintage canvas jacket, now patiently waiting to be creatively repurposed someday:

 

Not long after the cowboy shirt project, I'd moved on to making some rather loud but really fun pieced and appliqued vests, many of them for my musician friends. I'll put those in another post. But cowgirls were some of the most audacious and independent women in American culture back in the day, and even if you -- like me -- have never been on a horse, it's good to remember we've all got a little cowgirl soul.

Center for Pattern Design

My flagged pages are stacking up again, so here's one link I want to share. The Center for Pattern Design/Antiquity Press has some unusual and very interesting patterns for sale, among them:

A pattern for three styles of Vionnet roses -- I love roses in any form, fabric, ribbon or real live plants, so I'll be ordering this. These are the classic, elegant silk roses you want on your bridal gown, or pinned to your cashmere sweater, a la Mrs. O:

Then there are these two dresses:

The dress patterns are not inexpensive, but they look like collector's items for garment sewers. The Center for Pattern Design also has books and supplies for those interested in sophisticated design, draping and construction. I think they're launching a new Web site soon, so sign up for their e-mail alerts if you like what you see.

Seeing Real Live Art (and looking back and forward)

As I've mentioned before, I think costume design is as fascinating as any of the other textile arts. So often there's a literary or historical context to the design, and the technical dimensions are complex and involve a lot of specialized skills as well as imagination and constant improvisation. Here's an article on the costume shop for the New York City Ballet. From the story:

"In addition to 13 costume makers, who create patterns and sew, the shop employs two people who are described by Mr. Happel as the “unsung heroes” of the ballet. They are a shopper, Tracey Herman, who finds anything the shop needs for costumes, and a dyer, Sarah Lenigan, who spends her days matching colors — often to old designs, which are the only indication of what the original shade of a faded costume might have been.

In my younger days, I worked for a season as a shopper for the Santa Cruz Shakespeare Festival, and as a dyer for the Denver Center Theater Company. These jobs aren't glamorous. I think it would be much easier to be a shopper today, with the Internet; for me, it involved driving thousands of miles, all over the Bay Area, searching for things like, oh, twelve spools of mauve carpet thread, or pastel feathers, or dressmaker's boning, or whatever the whim thing was that day.  A dyer has more autonomy, and the work is more likely to occassionally involve some real embellishment and surface design, depending on the shows, but often it's distressing thrift shop clothes, overdying or, as mentioned above, matching colors. 

The best part of working in a costume shop is the people; they're always incredibly creative and interesting, not always easy but always great at what they do and proud of it. Sometimes it's a peripatetic life, with a lot of moving around from season to season. I remember that we had one stitcher at the Denver Center who had made stage costumes for Prince -- he had some stories. 

Back here at the Mystic Cowgirl Ranch, I went last week to see an exhibition of photographs and mixed-media textile pieces by Deidre Adams, who combines stitching and painting in the most wonderful way. I've written about her work before and admired it on her Web site, and I eagerly wait for new postings on her blog. I'm always reminded, though, that there is nothing like seeing the real work. In Deidre's case, there is so much subtlety and texture and intricacy in the work that can't be experienced on the screen. While seeing the images online gives a very satisfying sense of emotive depth and gorgeously sensual color fields, the work itself has even more detail and complexity. 

We're so fortunate to have so many resources at hand; we can look at the work of artists all around the world. Through blogs and artist sites we can even see the work in progress, and converse with the artist; through books and magazines we can still see works on paper in two dimensions that teach us about the world. But in seeing the work face to face, there is an intimacy that can't be replicated. 

I'm off to a slow start with my word for the year and with setting goals for 2009. There are some irons in the fire that might mean big changes. I keep coming back to the word "effortless" -- not as in lazy, but as in without struggle - things unfolding and expanding and arriving with ease. We don't quite have a single word for that.

Now I'm off to the yoga mat and then back to work. I do practice almost daily as a rule, but this is World Yoga Practice Month and I'm committed to yoga every single day in January, without fail. I'm not much of a joiner, but in this case I can join something and just keep doing what I do, only more of it. Beautiful!