Red Thread Studio

Making Good: Andean Art of MANTO

My efforts at a separate blog on sustainable textiles and clothing haven't yielded great results. For one thing, nobody seems to find it, so I'm not motivated to write new posts without readers. And for another, truth be told, I'm disappointed with some of the sustainable fashion and textile claims that I see, especially here in the United States. It's too often marketing instead of real innovation; too many light-green buzzwords instead of real commitment to standards of environmental or social change; too much replicating whatever fashion dictates for skinny 20-year-olds or making t-shirts instead of a real aesthetic. Story of my life -- I want substance AND style.

I realize this is an emerging movement, and that it's hard to change a global behemoth of an industry, especially in a shattered economy. But I'm just not that interested in pushing a lot of "sexy eco-chic diva!" or "adorable green mommy!" junk on my readers. There are plenty of other blogs doing that.

So perhaps I'll just go back to posting here when I find something of real authenticity and interest in the sustainable and slow fashion/textile world. Readers, I trust you will let me know if it's too much, too little, or if I'm trying to cover too much ground under one blog umbrella. As you know, my dream with this blog would be to turn it into a real magazine, or e-zine, for global textile artists, artisans, crafters and explorers, and magazines often have a wide-ranging portfolio guided by one overarching theme, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

With that prelude (never at a loss for words), I found MANTO, a wonderful Argentinian company that seems to embody principles of Slow Cloth and sustainability. They're interviewed here at Luxe Essentiel, an international green design blog, saying:

"MANTO (Cloak- woven fabric) are the threads that connect us. MANTO is woven in the hills. We gather, creating a fertile social, cultural, artistic and commercial link between the weavers of the Andean culture of northern Argentina and city dwellers all over the world. We contribute to the knowledge and spreading of unknown work methods and lifestyles, paying respect to their cycles and their connection with nature. We design products that represent this feeling." 

On the Manto site, there is this lovely quote: "Each weave leads us to the art and the knowledge of the one who makes it."

And this is what their beautiful, chic yet timeless garments look like (for more, click on collections on the site):

Slow Fashion and Spring Fortune

After subzero temperatures and finding myself confronting mortality not once but twice in the last week (through being called back for a repeat mammogram and a too-close-for-comfort encounter between a train and a car that I was a passenger in), and fortunately having angels looking after me in both cases, I find myself knee-deep in work deadlines that I've fallen behind on, so my posts will be short (maybe that's a good thing). I've been trying to make Christmas ornaments, too, but it's frustrating when hours of hand beading and embroidery yield something that looks like you'd find it at Pier 1 on sale for $3.99. That may say more about me than our culture of cheap textiles, however.

Which brings to this week's must-read article, from the London Times: Disposable Fashion: For sale, Hardly Worn, 2 Million Tonnes of Clothes. The world of fast fashion and textiles yields not just a distorted sense of where and how textiles are made, at high environmental and social cost, but even when recycled these poorly made products are difficult to reuse. Slow Fashion - buying fewer, better-quality clothes -- is important, and learning how to make things is even better, if only because it helps people to understand what it takes to make a garment. 

If you just can't take any more bad news about our global condition, there's a fun article previewing the Marimekko spring collection of textile designs at this Helsinki paper. The designs, a collaboration between Marimekko and Finnish-British designer Sanna Annukka, are rooted in myth and legend and story; for example, "All kinds of things can be seen in Taikamylly, which tells of a device which churns out prosperity: ladles and forks, pearls and coins." I love the idea that ladles and forks are symbols of abundance. This design is called Pearls of Fortune:

May you all have angels on alert and pearls of fortune -- and forks and ladles, too.

Creating Songs and Worlds in Stitches (more Peruvian textiles)

I'm slowly emerging from Electionland, though I readily admit that I'm completely besotted by our new First Family. Every time I see them being all affectionate and sweet I feel like the orphan outside the happy family's window, wondering if they'd adopt me. 

I did stitch while watching all the speechifying last week, and this is the current status of the shsisha practice piece. I have a little more beadwork to do, then I want to move on to the bigger piece I have planned.

Here are more photos of textiles from the Shipibo Indians of Peru. I've reduced these somewhat for faster loading, but if you want to see a full-size image file, just let me know. All of these photos were taken by Chris Kilham, the Medicine Hunter, who works closely with the Shipibo Indians and other indigenous peoples all over the world, and is also, among other things, the man who introduced me to yoga in 1993 and designed the yoga practice that is still the foundation of my practice today. This is his most well-known yoga book.

Here's what Howard G. Charing says about these rhythmic patterns:

"The main figures in the Shipibo designs are the square, th rhombus, the octagon, and the cross. The symmetry of the patterns emanating from the centre (which is our world) is a representation of the outer and inner worlds, a map of the Cosmos. The cross represents the Southern Cross constellation which dominates the night sky and divides the cosmos into four quadrants, the intersection of the arms of the cross is the centre of the universe, and becomes the Cosmic Cross. 

The Cosmic Cross represents the eternal spirit of a person and the union of the masculine and feminine principles -- the very cycle of life and death -- which reminds us of the great act of procreation of not only the universe, but also of humanity, and our individual selves. The smaller, flowing patterns within the geometric forms are the radiating power of the Cosmic Serpent which turns this way and that, betwixt and between, constantly creating the universe as it moves."

Whew. Not every textile tradition is quite so mystical and metaphysical, but all over the world, we find textile stories like these, with a language of their own, deeply integrated into the history and social constructs of a culture. A key element of the Slow Cloth mission, at least as I envision it, is preserving and honoring these traditions, documenting them, keeping them alive and vibrant, not letting them get swallowed up in an Old Navy world. We lose something when cultures, arts and languages die or lose their integrity, just as when animal or plant species become extinct. 

There's plenty to say, as Anaka of BrassTacks Madras pointed out in the comment thread on African textiles, about how we who want to support traditional artisans in developing countries can go about it without doing harm, or creating markets that then collapse. This is a concern for many things -- foods, medicinal plants, other crafts. But I think I'll save that for another post and just let you enjoy these vivid works of creation and visions. 

October Days

Thanks to the friendly green people at Crafting a Green World for linking to my post on the presidential candidates' positions on the arts. Welcome to new visitors who found me through that link; new and old might be interested to know that I've finally written a first introductory post for Making Good, my new blog on organic, sustainable, ethical and artisan clothing and textile enterprises. This first post will be familiar ground for many of my readers here, but check back often and there'll be new news.

I see these two blogs as complementary (with some overlap) and I hope you'll enjoy them both. From my perspective I have trouble fitting all of my textile interests under this one umbrella, so we'll see if this works out better.

If recent posts have piqued your interest in African textiles, visit Ananse Village, a fair trade online marketplace for African crafts and culture. They sent me a lovely e-mail; all of their fabrics are manufactured in Africa by hand,  including batik, tie-dye, wax prints, indigo prints, mud cloth and kuba cloth, like these:

Ananse ships from within the U.S., I believe, so ordering should be easy, and they also sell beadwork, drums, coffee, masks and other handmade artisan objects. 

We're having spectacularly beautiful October days here, all the more precious since it could snow any time. This is the best month of the year here, though. It looks like this:

I hope your days are beautiful too. Back soon. 

Stitch: New Magazine

This new magazine for creative sewing will be on the newsstands on November 11, and can be pre-ordered from Interweave now at 10 percent off the newsstand price. It's a special issue, but if the response is good, maybe it'll become a regular publication. I wrote the "sew green" article on organic and eco-friendly sewing -- and I'm so proud to have it there on the cover next to an interview with Natalie Chanin.  The cover looks wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the whole issue. 

Enigmatic Equinox

The immeasurably talented Steve reminded me tonight that I haven't posted in a week. I think it's quite amazing that he reads my blog, since he makes music, not stitches, so I'd better write something interesting. I did finish the big work project . . . and my taxes. . . and then promptly fell into a trough of discouragement for a couple of days. Yesterday, though, was art therapy all the way. It was Open Studios weekend in my town, and I went to the studio of my friend and teacher Judith Trager, whose righteous motto is "eschew cute," and to the studio of Susan Wechsler, a prolific mosaic artist who makes beautiful spirit houses aligned with the nine themes of the feng shui bagua (technically eight plus the center), and extraordinary Buddha shrines. 

Last night I went to a concert of classical Indian music and katha dance; my dance teacher was one of the musicians. These are incredibly rich and nuanced art forms with an ancient heritage, and since I've been stitching shisha mirrors, and getting unexpected e-mails from Bombay from someone who read a yoga article of mine, and talking with Acey about India, it all had a lovely synchronicity. They played a beautiful evening raga that brought tears to my eyes with its sense of twilight descending at the end of the day, on the penultimate evening of summer. 

By today I was myself again, regrouping and making plans. I began to configure another blog, to be focused on commercial organic, ethical, sustainable and artisan textiles and apparel. One of the reasons I started blogging was to help redirect my career and move my job search forward; this blog has become more of a personal art space and a place for other artists, crafters, culturalists and the Slow Cloth-minded to find me, and that's just as it should be, but it seems I also need a professional space of some kind. 

For anyone interested, I have an article on the sustainable apparel market in the current issue of Organic Processing magazine, and another article coming out in a new publication in November on sustainable and organic fabrics for home sewers -- more on that soon. And if any of you get the Gaiam holiday catalog, why, I wrote some of the catalog copy for that -- distinctive, I'm sure!

And in the midst of all this, there have been many conversations, internal and external, about where to go from here, what it means to be an artist today and how to commit to a disciplined creative path. It looks like there will be more market research reports to pay the bills, but I'm thinking about graduate school, new book proposals, relocating to a place with more opportunity, all of the above, and trying to be open to it all and patient and ready for the moment when the universe makes its move. How to finance anything is a really good question right now. 

And as you might guess, I'm not done with politics yet! "For the Swing Vote" -- 

Green Threads: Harmony Art, Coleccion Luna, More

After endless arguing with Typepad, I finally have the new composing software they promised two months ago. So far it's clunky and painfully slow. This post has taken me hours and it's still putting images over text. If it works as advertised, though, you should be able to open links in a separate window. 

I've been painfully slow myself about responding to some really lovely e-mails and comments from my readers. I'm not ignoring you -- I promise. I've been bogged down in work and wanted to write responses as thoughtful and generous as the messages have been. I love getting your comments and mail, and meeting you through this blog.

For this post, I have a veritable slew of sustainable and organic textile news and links. I'm still thinking about creating a separate blog just for sustainable and organic fabric, clothing and design, to be called some variation of Green Threads (Red Thread, Green Thread, get it?). It would replace my other dormant organic foods industry blog. Stay tuned. I realize I have trouble keeping up with one blog . . . the dream is certainly to spend my days researching and writing and educating about art, craft, cloth, culture etc., and editing textile books and building an amazing Web site and making art and craft, but for now I must simultaneously be (a) working to pay the bills and (b) searching for a long-term job, and I am feeling like I'm in quicksand on all fronts. Okay, no more complaining. Here we go:

These are new 100% organic cotton sateen prints from Harmony Susalla of Harmony Art. (I've tried a hundred different ways to load the images but they continue to show up on the site over the text; I have no more hours to waste on the disaster that is Typepad in this iteration.) All are 110" wide and 233 thread count. If you're dubious about these gorgeous vibrant colors on organic cotton, then be assured that Harmony, in addition to being a creative and generous soul, is one of the most conscientious organic people around -- she is extremely careful about dyes, printing processes, and standards, and these are the real deal. You can buy them from Organic Cotton Plus or Near Sea Naturals. Or you can order in quantity/wholesale directly from Harmony Art.

Harmony is eager to do more work with textile artists and will be a speaker at next year's Surface Design Association conference.

Next, Molly at Ambatalia Fabrics has announced that she'll be closing her Mill Valley, Calif., fabric store, but re-opening as The Fabric Society, a "creative resource center for sustainable textiles and innovative design." Sounds right up our alley, and it'll be great to see what happens next.

Finally, my friend Chef Donna sent me a virtual introduction to Stephanie Jolluck, the creative genius behind Coleccion Luna, a sustainable company that works with traditional textiles of Guatemala. Stephanie's designs use vintage and recycled woven fabrics, and the results are joyous and beautiful. I'm going to do a longer post on Coleccion Luna and Stephanie's other projects -- she has a lot going on, very inspiring global artisan change-the-world stuff. For now, go to her site and make your wish list.  Here's a taste of one of her beautiful bags, and the Cha Cha Chica shoes I am coveting, made from vintage textiles in partnership with Ann Roth Shoes, and supporting World in Need Now, Stephanie's nonprofit organization.

This is the Large Floral Lucite Handle Rainbow Bag, $52:

Now, go make something, read something, be inspired. I will be back soon if I can wrestle this Typepad nightmare to the ground.
Yours in beauty, truth and creativity, Lainie

Green Craft Carnival, Fabrics and Fashion

Skye at Crafting a Green World has linked to some of my posts for the site's first Carnival of Green Crafts . . .   it's just the right time of year for a carnival to come to town, so take a look, and thanks, Skye.

This week's Project Runway challenge involved "green" fabric, and it was a little disappointing. There wasn't much exposition about what green fabric means -- none, really -- and mostly the designers were complaining about ugly fabric. The gimmick was that the models did the fabric shopping, so I'm not sure what their choices were. Then there was a lot of talk about "organic silk" -- there are various silks that fall into the sustainable/green fabric category, but for silk to be organic, the worms would have to have access to outdoors, so we'd have to be starting with some kind of wild or muga silk, and then the mulberry trees or other leaves upon which they feed would have to be certified organic. The wonderful Organic Clothing blog has a good article about environmental and ethical issues in silk production, and I wrote about silk in this post in January.

double-layer Amity Peace Silk from Near Sea Naturals

In short, calling the silk they used "organic" was probably inaccurate though they may have been using some beautiful wild silks or peace silks where the silkworms are not killed.  I was disappointed that they weren't more clear about the fabrics they were using and describing them appropriately. One designer (who won the challenge) was using tulle; I haven't seen anything I'd call sustainable tulle, though it's possible it's out there, and if so I would have loved to hear about it. Only one designer seemed to have some understanding about dyes and chemicals used in textile processing and their impact on the environment, and there was no talk about fair trade or labor issues. 

handpainted tussah silk rovings from Treenway Silks

There were none of the really beautiful and fun organic cotton prints, either. In all, I think they missed an opportunity to do something really cool and informative, and instead of Natalie Portman, maybe a judge from the EarthPledge Future Fashion project or a designer who's really committed and knowledgeable in this area would have been better. Some kind of "refashioning" challenge  might suit their format best, and I think they've done those before, where the contestants use the clothes that another designer is wearing to create something new.

Now, a few more inspirational links, otherwise known as Lainie's Work Avoidance Project:

• Readers know I'm a huge fan of Selvedge magazine, and not just for the gorgeous photos and articles -- the ads are a fertile launching pad for links to designers, suppliers, galleries and publishers. I discovered that these ads are also online at the magazine site, and you can just click through to the advertiser's sites. I think you have to register and get a password to access the site.
• Thanks to Sharon B's fantastic journey through the alphabet of fiber blogs, I visited this lovely blog by Brazilian textile and mixed media artist Gaby, which led me to the site of a Brazilian fashion designer named Isabela Capeto (the site has an English version). It's a very fun site; click on the Collections tab to see her clothes (or click on the Press tab for thumbnail views) for some inspiration or just to enjoy their beauty and femininity. She uses all kinds of hand stitching and collage techniques. These are beautiful, romantic and modern clothes, with liberal use of sequins and references to many multicultural textile traditions.

Circles of Cloth: More Virtual Textile Travel

I have travel on my mind . . . especially places near water. Here's a dream trip: The Textile Society of America is having its annual symposium in Hawaii in September this year, and the theme is textiles as cultural expression. This sounds like a fascinating event, probably well worth figuring out a way to go.

Other temptations: The Maiwa workshops, and the Organic Exchange conference in Portugal in October for the organic cotton industry.

And if nothing else -- though it's mostly been a homebound year so far, except in my mind, there is a chance that I could go to Brazil  in the fall to speak about sustainable textiles and apparel. I was lucky to go for the first time a few years ago to attend an organic and sustainable products conference there that's run by some wonderful people, and we stay in touch to this day. The conference that year was in Rio de Janeiro, a city of great wealth and beauty alongside great poverty; like most magical places, it's a little dangerous and very seductive.

At Bangles & Clay, a blog that's part of a nonprofit organization called Nest, there's a post about Coopa-Roca, a sewing cooperative in Rio founded by Maria-Teresa Leal (the English-language Web site for Coopa-Roca itself is here). Leal founded the cooperative as a way to utilize the sewing skills of women living in the profound poverty of one of Rio's worst favelas and create decent work opportunities for women raising families in violent slums. Now the clothes of Coopa-Roca are seen all over the world, and despite many challenges, it's been a success story in the midst of all-too-common despair in these neighborhoods.

There are stories like this in many places, and room and need for many more. Each one is different and unique, and each one comes down to a chance for people to celebrate their textile and craft heritage and skills, often at risk of being lost, and to have work and fair pay.

The Coopa-Roca women use recycled garments and fabrics and traditional knitting, crochet and patchwork techniques, including yo-yos -- fuxicos in Portuguese. I love seeing the resurgence of yo-yos -- like many children, learning to make a yo-yo was one of my first sewing lessons. And I love that it connects me to women and children worlds away through something as simple as a needle, thread and a circle of cloth.

Every Thread Has a Soul, and the Dance of Art and Nature

An article in the new issue of Selvedge quotes an Arab proverb: "Every thread has a soul." Awesome. I think I'll make that my official tag line for this blog, and maybe even its new name. In Googling it, I don't find any other references to this proverb, but maybe it's little-known in the West with origins in the mists of time, and that totally works for me.

I joined Stitchin' Fingers, Sharon B's terrific new fiber arts community. Anyone can join, and there are many sub-groups forming to cover just about every technique or interest. I keep thinking about starting a Slow Cloth group and/or a global textiles group . . . anyone interested?

I've also been thinking about, and wanting to do a post about various kinds of eco-art -- the intersection of art and the environment (I've written about art and agriculture on my other blog).  Nature and art are inextricably intertwined, of course, and nature has provided us with inspiration from the dawn of humankind. Making art from unprocessed natural materials or integrating art and natural spaces, a la the brilliant Andy Goldsworthy, is one kind of eco-art. There are many ways that fiber artists are connected to this sphere; after all, until recently, all fiber came from plants. Just a couple of links to explore:

• Abigail Doan is a mixed media and environmental artist who works with fiber. Her work is extremely intuitive on one hand, and the way she uses threads and fibers in nature makes emotional sense, yet it's also challenging work with an intellectual and ethical context.
• Though I've not personally worked with natural dyes, this is a place where art and nature do an intimate dance. As mentioned in my previous post, Permacouture is exploring this area; Cheryl Kolander at Aurora Silk and others have also been pioneers.
• Nicole Dextras is a Vancouver artist -- take a look at her Weedrobes series.
• Lots of people have blogged about the World Beach Project and the radical Crocheted Coral Reef project, but the links are worth repeating if you've not discovered them yet (you're in for a treat).

I think all the renewed interest in the arts of spinning and felting is related to the environmental movement. We've finally figured out that food comes from the soil and the farm -- now we're beginning to understand where fabric comes from, too. The closer we get to that understanding, the more people want to work with fiber in its raw form. Fiber is as ancient and as intrinsic to community as food. And making it beautiful and meaningful connects us to soul and spirit, and to each other.

And now, with all this talk of ethereal and natural things, I must get my body to the yoga mat. Go find some inspiration in nature today, and create.

photo by Streuwerk.