Red Thread Studio

Hidden Things

Look, it's a midweek post! I like that.
The always-wonderful V&A Museum will host a quilt exhibition next year, covering 300 years of quilting in England. Curator Sue Prichard has started Hidden Histories, Untold Stories, a blog to chronicle preparations for the exhibition, and the introductory post promises good things to come and a unique look behind the scenes of museum work:

"This exhibition aims to showcase the skill and creativity involved in making highly complex and decorative quilts and bedcovers from 1700-2010 - we will also reveal some of the extraordinary stories behind some of the most superb examples.  Most importantly this exhibition is about the hand and the heart, the sheer emotional response to objects which are so much part of all of our history, we simply need an opportunity to rediscover them."

I like the reference to untold stories and hidden things; I like secret pockets and furniture with hidden drawers and mysterious locks and false backs. There was an exhibition some time ago about the practice of hiding clothes in walls of buildings; I don't remember what the logic (or illogic) was behind the practice, but -- how interesting.

And here's another morsel - the NY Times has a great story today on their Frugal Traveler blog on the flea markets of Paris. In the end, the author bought a vintage textile. Good choice. As I've said before, I'm much more Paris flea market than clutter-free organization. I like the treasure hunt for those hidden things.

There's a great country song that Kelly Willis recorded years ago -- I don't know who wrote it, but here are the lyrics:

I don't need a man to flatter me with praises
I don't need to wear big diamond rings
All I ever need is an honest guy to hold me
Someone who can show me hidden things

Now all across this world I have been a constant traveler
I have sat with presidents and kings
I have sat on stairs with men who have delivered
And I have come to know some hidden things

I don't need to live in a mansion on a hillside
And watch the colored birds as they sing
All I ever want is an honest eye that sparkles
That surely will reveal some hidden things

So if you find someone who says he loves you truly
Make sure that you take a look within
For a handsome face can fade and passion soon grows colder
And all that will remain are hidden things

photo of hidden courtyard by AnnieInBeziers. Some rights reserved.

Celebrating India and Shooting Stars

I'm still wrestling with my deadline this week, but my open windows of sites I want to link to are piling up, so here are a few, and forgive me if this post is a little rambling.

• In honor of Slumdog Millionaire's unlikely ascent to the top of the entertainment heap, and the absolute, sincere joy and curiousity on the Indian kids' faces last night at the Oscars, here's Indian By Design, a very beautiful blog full of contemporary art, textiles, architecture and ideas from the  subcontinent.
• A few more for India. I've mentioned this one before - I'm a big fan: Anaka's BrassTacks Madras blog. Anaka has a small but growing clothing company based in India, and her thoughtful blog chronicles her experiences as a sustainablity-minded entrepreneur with a love of beautiful textiles and intelligent fashion.
• Amazing photographs of India here -- the colors are just astonishing. 

Hmmm, I guess I should go see the movie. Next week.

I also want to link to Judy Martin's wonderful post called New Art History. Judy considers the idea that "19th century quiltmakers were artists and knew themselves to be," instead of the modern notion that these women were just scavenging scraps of fabric and making do,  and that any art on their part was almost accidental. Traditional quilting has such a bad name in some textile art circles -- so much so that at least one very popular art quilter/blogger refuses to call her quilts quilts, and my comment on her blog, saying that it was really a shame that this was the state of things, was deleted for not supporting her marketing goals. Seriously. (And as an aside, please always feel free to be honest in your comments here -- I promise you that you won't interfere with my marketing goals.) Maybe, to Judy's point, if we saw old quilts less as mending and more as true creative efforts, we could take some of that quilt stigma away. 

Finally, Harmony (who'll be speaking at the Surface Design Association conference in May) sent a link to the work of fiber artist Carolyn Kallenborn. A professor at the University of Wisconsin, Kallenborn makes very powerful garments and sculptures that are drawn from, she says, moments of transformation. An exhibition of her work opens this week at the Quincy Art Center in Quincy, Illinois. This garment is made from 40 pounds of river rock and taffeta:

It made me think of the idea of 2009 as the mineral year -- the year of what remains when everything has been burned or washed away. I thought of that, too, reading Dijanne's accounts of the Australian fires. 

And tonight's the night to see the green two-headed comet Lulin! I have no idea what that's all about, but here's a song for it:

I saw a shooting star tonight

And I thought of you

You're trying to break into another world

A world I never knew

I always kind of wondered if you ever made it through

I saw a shooting star tonight

And I thought of you. 

I saw a shooting star tonight

And I thought of me

If I was still the same

If I ever became what you wanted me to be

Did I miss the mark, overstep the line

That only you could see . . . .

I saw a shooting star tonight

Slip away.

                   Bob Dylan, Shooting Star

Refuge of the Roads

These are the clouds of Michelangelo

Muscular with gods and sungold

Shine on your witness

In the refuge of the roads.

-- Joni Mitchell, Refuge of the Roads

These last two weeks were a rollercoaster. I got a little carried away with the political drama. As much as I was energized and inspired by the first week, I was exhausted and repulsed by the sneering, bitter aggression of the second. I know not everyone will agree with me, but you can take it or leave it. Yesterday I had to pull back; I finished a chapter of the market research report on the exciting world of sugar and sweeteners that's currently paying my bills; I made dust covers for my sewing machines (actual skills involved!); I took a long time for yoga; and I contemplated my ultimate Plan B, leaving the country. 

I'm a dual citizen of Canada by virtue of being Canadian-born, and I'm always glad to hear from my Canadian readers since I could be your neighbor soon. I haven't spent much time there -- only my first year of life in Edmonton, and part of my 18th year in a tiny apartment on Isabella Street in Toronto, where I learned to drink Grand Marnier from my urbane roommates and had most of my worldly goods stolen by a neighbor whose girlfriend had left him; he thought that gifts of my clothes and jewelry might bring her back. The soundtrack that year was Hejira and Running on Empty and Bonnie Raitt on 8-track tape, and the snowfall set records.

In the airport on the cold February day that I left Toronto, a man approached me to ask if I wanted to go and be a blackjack dealer at the Calgary Stampede. A road not taken, and he was probably asking something else entirely, but the cowgirl archetype has been a part of me ever since.  I met a friend of spirit, he drank and womanized. What if. 

I bought fabric there that winter and made a Dresden Plate quilt from instructions in McCall's Needlework & Crafts, now very faded and torn:

It makes me think now of Dijanne's incredible Traveller's Blanket, which I've been meaning to mention for some time. Her work is mesmerizing and beautiful, as always, and the concept is mystical and rich -- I love the depth of her research and inspiration. Here is what Dijanne wrote about it:

The blanket is inspired by the idea that the maker is a traveller in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, one of the great travellers from medieval times in the decade or so preceding Marco Polo - and the fragments of fabric that he sews to the blanket are an aide de memoire of his experiences , but, as he is also a fabric merchant it is his way of memorising cloth to be replicated in the future when he is home - it's a bit of a play on the idea of memory of cloth and memory as a sensation rather than a photographic record.

So my old quilt is a traveler's blanket of a different sort, still an aide de memoire of a strange journey. The I Ching has a hexagram for the traveler, #56, The Wanderer or Sojourning. "You are a stranger in a strange land, whose identity comes from a distant centre," says my translation by Stephen Karcher. But with a peripatetic childhood, my identity -- fractured though it has always been - had to come from within. What does a traveler's blanket look like when the traveler never returns home?

Quilts of Soul, Strength and Scarcity

I saw the exhibition Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt at the Denver Art Museum yesterday. This is not the same exhibition of quilts that appeared in 2003 at the Whitney Museum, inspiring critic Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times to call them "some of the most miraculous works of modern art that America has produced." Those quilts have since appeared on postage stamps, among other things, and made the Gee's Bend quilting style famous. But the quilters, the spirit and the story are the same.

It's the story that makes these works astounding. From an artistic viewpoint, they are all visually arresting; some are more successful than others. A few quilts are incredibly dynamic, with colors and shapes making an inventive, harmonious whole enhanced by the raw stitching, exposed knots and uneven binding that reveal the maker's hand. Some are more jarring. Most quilt artists today would probably attempt to develop more refined techniques, unless they were self-consciously trying to imitate this style.

But these women, until recently, were not aiming to be quilt artists, selling in galleries and exhibiting in museums, and could hardly imagine that possibility. They were trying to inject some creative salvation into the task of keeping their families warm in lives of the most abject poverty in this great but sometimes unjust country.

The town of Gee's Bend is isolated on three sides by the Alabama River, with limited access on the fourth side. Its residents are African-American, descended from slaves, and historically subjected to every injustice thereof --  a ferry service was shut down in 1962 to prevent the townspeople from registering to vote, not resuming until two years ago, and education and opportunity was minimal at best. In Wilcox County today, almost half of children under 18 live below the poverty line.

The characteristic Gee's Bend quilting style emerged and evolved in this insulated community, passed down through the generations. The quilts are made from used clothes and fabrics, many using a simple Housetop or partial Log Cabin block, others with a more random structure. Fabric pieces tend to be large, or as large as repurposed used clothing (or corduroy scraps from Sears, Roebuck & Co.) would allow, and few of the quilts are squared off; some have binding on one or two sides only; the quilting stitches follow crooked, curved or bending lines and the stitches are big by quilting standards. They were made quickly to be used quickly, for warmth in unheated rooms. Yet the women took the time and had the spirit and imagination to make creative choices, often dramatic and unexpected and playful.

To see these quilts on the walls of an elegant museum gave me some cognitive dissonance, because they reverberate with this story of scarcity few of us could overcome, and strength that most of us would be hard-pressed to find; it's in every stitch. This story is in many patchwork quilts, but it is especially poignant here. It's also a story of joy and creativity and the deep relations that have held this community together.

Today, thankfully, many of the Gee's Bend quilters have benefited from the popularity of the quilts, though there have been some lawsuits regarding payments, intellectual property rights and licensing agreements. I was moved by the story of one woman who stopped quilting for 20 years because of illness and depression, overcome by a life harder than I can imagine. When the Gee's Bend quilts were "discovered" and began to sell and return some benefits to the women, her despondency also began to life, and she was able to stitch again.

A book on display at the exhibition said that she had prayed all her life that her last years would be her best years. She felt that her prayers had been answered.

Quiltapalooza: International Quilt Study Center Opens

The new building for the International Quilt Study Center opens Sunday (March 30) in Lincoln, Neb., with an opening exhibition by Nancy Crow. I'm very excited about this (and had hoped to be there this week), as I have a dear brother and my most awesome niece and two supreme nephews in Lincoln.

On my last visit, I sat in on a conversation consisting of two hours discussing the football team -- on which the University spends many, many millions of dollars every year -- followed by grumbling about the $12 million in private funds spent on this innovative building. One particular person didn't think anyone would care about quilts, and that the Center wouldn't bring prestige or dollars to Lincoln.

It's unfortunate that the Quilt Center has to be up against this kind of thinking, and I have to say I heartily disagree and I hope this man will be proven very wrong. This is a world-class addition to Lincoln, a brilliant and forward-looking tribute to the Midwest and American quilting heritage, and worth a visit or many; if you're on a cross-country road trip involving Interstate 80, this is where you definitely want to make a stop. Other quilt exhibitions and events are also taking place in Lincoln this week, including a show opening April 4 at the Lux Center for the Arts curated by artist and blogger  Lisa Call with quilts by Lisa, Deidre Adams, and others.

(click to enlarge photo)

Slow Cloth, Fashion Design, and Garment Sewing

Can fashion fit into the Slow Cloth concept? How about home garment sewing? I say -- absolutely yes to both. While most of the people who have visited and commented and linked to this blog (thank you all so much) are textile artists, there are related and overlapping communities -- people in the fashion and home textiles industries,  and people who just love to sew garments and approach sewing from a perspective of craftsmanship, quality, and creativity.

There is art in every craft and craft in every art. As someone who loves garment sewing as well as other textile arts, the only conflict I see is how to best use limited time and resources and not get lost in dilettante-ishness.

On the commercial fashion side, I've been reading up on the Slow Fashion movement as part of my research on the sustainable apparel market. In addition to using environmentally appropriate materials and eliminating abusive labor practices, Slow Fashion also rejects the trend-focused planned obsolescence that has driven the fashion industry for decades. Slow Fashion emphasizes lasting design and craftsmanship, so you can buy fewer clothes with a longer life. Design and color palettes are compatible from season to season, so you can build a wardrobe instead of replacing everything in an increasingly rapid and wasteful cycle. Brand loyalty and quality replace quantity.

Last week, this review of  several men's fashion shows appeared in the New York Times. As always, fashion writer Cathy Horyn's analysis is perceptive and intellectually challenging. In "It Never Hurts to Quote the Classics," she talks about designers referencing  handcrafts and focusing on craftsmanship while also creating entirely modern garments.

There are no specific shout-outs here to Slow Fashion or sustainable apparel, but throughout the fashion design and garment industry this shift seems to be taking place. Admittedly, it's much less of a stretch to talk about classic design and craft in men's clothing, which has always been less exploitative than women's fashion. But still, it seemed noteworthy.

A little closer to a textile artist's heart is Alabama Chanin, a true Slow Cloth company. From their site:

Here, in Florence, Alabama, quilting and textiles have long been part of our history. So instead of sourcing our manufacturing far away, we have chosen to utilize the skills and knowledge of local artisans, who hand sew every garment. We sew by hand not because we don’t like technology, but because we choose to preserve these living arts. Modern concepts, coupled with old-time stitching techniques, not only strengthen the bond between our past and present; they also have the unique power to create beautiful, one-of-a-kind garments that are infused with care. Despite this nod to the past, our designs are modern; some are sexy, others are modest, all are comfortable and made for living. We use new and recycled materials in a way that showcase quality of cut, attention to detail and the artistry of the hands that created them.

Founder Natalie Chanin previously founded Project Alabama, a company with a similar mission. She sold the company and now Project Alabama products are made in India. But it looks like things turned out all right for Chanin, and her new company looks inspiring.

So whether you're a fashion designer, a dedicated follower of fashion or a home garment sewer, or both, there is plenty of room to incorporate textile traditions and skills, be innovative and forward-thinking, and conscious in approach. There's a lot of inspiration out there. Let me know your thoughts and ideas about this, and have a lovely, creative weekend. I'll be working on my sustainable apparel research and my blogroll . . .

What Is Novel Is What We Have Not Seen And Heard Before

There is a wonderful tutorial on sashiko at the Purl Bee blog. This Japanese craft has elements of quilting and of a very ordered embroidery; the thread is heavier than Western quilting thread, no frame or hoop is used, and traditional stitching patterns are geometric and symmetrical. Mari explains the process in detail with wonderful and very helpful photographs.

According to Nancy Shriber in her lovely Sashiko Handbags 14 On 14 book,

Sashiko was originally designed as a mending technique to quilt together several layers of fabric for warmth and durability or for strengthening a single layer of fabric. Like quilting in America, sashiko had humble beginnings. The Japanese have been doing sashiko for practical sewing purposes since the early 18th century. It was developed as a way to recycle fabric and to extend the life of the garment. Sashiko is a running stitch sewn in repeating or interlocking patterns through one or more layers of fabric. As with many art forms, most of the stitch designs are simplified representations of things found in nature such as plants, birds, and clouds.

Visit Nancy's Contemporary Sashiko Web site gallery -- she has instructions there for this beautiful, simple wallet/checkbook cover as an introduction to contemporary sashiko:

Despite its humble beginnings, as with other Japanese crafts, sashiko is a beautiful form with infinite levels of skill and subtlety. In the United States we tend to want to make everything quick and easy and oversimplified -- and at the same time, create products to sell  that may not be necessary or even desirable to the heart of the practice.

As a result, sometimes the beauty and nuance of textile traditions are really lost on us. For instance: As I was searching around for information on sashiko, I came across this site on the Akan Cultural Symbols Project via Quilt Ethnic. In the Akan culture in Ghana, traditional cloth is woven to communicate with a rich and specific language -- here's one pattern from the site:

EMAA DA - NOVELTY

               

Symbol of     EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE, CREATIVITY, NOVELTY, and INNOVATION
From the proverb:  Dea emmaa da eno ne dea yennhunu na yennte bi da. 
Literal translation:  What  is novel is what we have not seen and heard before

Now, I know I've seen similar African fabrics and have only seen color and pattern, with no idea about the rich conveyance of concepts, messages, language and communication woven into the cloth by master artisans. This richness and meaning exists in textiles from so many cultures. This is part of the Slow Cloth approach: respecting the significance -- as well as enjoying the beauty -- of world textiles.