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Ideas From Pinterest

Monday, April 29th, 2019

The sharing of creative ideas is one of Pinterest’s best features, and I’m a fan. I don’t visit or pin every day – but on a sunday morning I often find a bit of browsing+writing time, as I do today. And another thing about Pinterest is that one thing so easily just leads on to another, meaning you can spend hours just browsing around. Like any other artist, I am always interested in technical ideas to think about using in my own work.

I love hand stitchery, and the resurgence in popularity it has enjoyed in recent years as a highly flexible technique for fibre artists and mixed media makers. Scroll down my contemporary hand stitch board to find this image of a stitchery by Marisa Ramirez that I pinned a while back. While I don’t care for her colour scheme, I was intrigued by (1) that stitched, appliqued circular shape looks like firm plastic – do I like it? not really, but will remember it some time, probably. (2) the patterned segment at the bottom of the pic (to which my first response was ‘hand stitch’) was probably stencilled with red-brown paint with a thin masking tape resist. Whether I’m correct or not doesn’t matter – it’s the pattern and its potential that strike me most. To show why, I did this quick line sketch with jottings to show how I begin to explore possibilities:

From a pattern of lines to – hand stitch, netting, knotting, macrame, knitting, machine stitch, applique, stencilling, free crochet, couching, marker pen drawing

From my lines and shapes board I selected this image of a beautiful set of ceramic pieces. Beside the image: “We design and make garden wall art made from ceramic. Our wall art is suitable for interiors and exteriors and handmade in Marbella, Spain. ” Absolutely. I could live with this, and have just the very wall! On their website www.gvega.com this and other customised wall sets are shown installed, and it is worth spending a little time looking at other parts of their website. I wish they were just down the road from here, as Marbella Spain is not on my travel list in the near future. However, having seen it, I’m sure I could take one of my own designs to a ceramic firm here in Montevideo. There are design elements in this that I have long used myself – wandering lines, inserts of pattern and texture, segmented shapes including arcs, and of course, glorious gold!

Ceramic tile set by G.Vega from www.gvega.com (with permission)

On another Pinterest board I post hole images I find. Holes have always intrigued me, and I once wrote: To every hole there is a foreground through which the viewer can see a background which might be up close, or stretch into the distance.  I know this is totally basic, but still something to think about. I love lace in its broadest sense; I wear several pairs of earrings and other jewellery with holes as the decorative element; and over many years I have made some art some works with holes revealing something behind :

Post Apocalyptic Lace, 2009. 40cm x 140cm: Full view right, details left and lower right. Burned holes in nylon organza sandwiching fabric segments.

Untitled, irregular shaped wall quilt photographed against cream-yellow wall. circa 1997.
On The Golden Mile 1986, stitchery, overall approx 30cm x 30cm

So, to summarise, Pinterest is like that folder, scrapbook album, drawer or shoebox filled with bits cut from magazines and catalogues!! All creative people save such things, and today we can do it digitally. The financial and environmental cost of keeping up via paper magazines is huge if you must keep up that way. Today, however, we can sign up for digital editions of papers and magazines, google online catalogues where available, and instead of clipping paper we can save text and images in so many ways. Pinterest is a great way to gather visuals. Our computers range from desktop to our pocket-sized phones, many of which have cameras. On our actual phones or using laptops and desktops, we can put images through photo editing programs, some of those even within phones and cameras themselves. Of course, that barely approaches what those filters and lenses can produce in the hands of a skilled professional photographer.

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Small Museum, Big Potential

Tuesday, April 16th, 2019

Another Kansas City museum we visited earlier this year was the Garment District History Museum. It’s currently located in the 800 block of Broadway, in the heart of what was the garment district of the city, but in the coming year will relocate to larger premises in a city cultural park with other museums, but I just couldn’t retain those details as I found myself being rather too generously informed by a female docent with and encyclopedic knowledge garnered over decades of close involvement in the historical society.

Every museum visitor has a slightly different reason for entering and looking around – we always split up and explore museums as individuals, each enjoying our own self-focused approach at our own pace, just sometimes circling back to make sure someone doesn’t miss something special. To me, visiting a museum is a blissful, almost private personal experience. Many good museums, large and small, have wandering knowledgeable docents and security supervisors of whom we are aware, but they keep a discreet if watchful distance, and just sometimes we hope they’ll be able to answer a question or direct us somewhere relevant. I eventually had to escape this lady saying “That’s all so interesting, thank you very much; and now I’d just like to quietly choose and photograph some things to post on my blog.” … walking away before she could renew her invasion of my space. I don’t know why others in our group weren’t paid as much attention as I received, perhaps I was clearly more interested in the garments!

Some wonderful gowns are on show. They would be so much better displayed without the distracting background panels, but that will change, I am sure when the museum moves premises. Below is a detail of the sleeve of the gown on the left.
This figure-hugging deep blue velvet gown, was originally worn as a wedding dress. Sleeves and collar feature devore work in art deco motif style, it was all bias cut, so hung beautifully. Stunning, dramatic.
Green is my favourite colour, and this magnificent gown is by Dior, from his 1947 New Look’ collection (which I appreciate so much more now having seen the Dior exhibition a couple of months after this museum visit) Featuring cinched waist, fuller padded hips, and neckline and sleeves lined with stiffened net for shaping.

Essentially we spent a couple of interesting hours in the two parts of this very interesting museum. Despite the docent’s strong recommendation, I skipped taking a closer a look at the giant needle and thread sculpture which I could see perfectly well from the entrance … it could have been a great photo op., though, maybe next time.

Seemingly just slung on a display rack recycled from a disappeared department store !! There was no date on this hat or any of the others on the rack, from various eras in my 65+years of fashion memory. I always loved these hats from the mid to late 60s. Mum and a couple of wedding guests wore similar ones to our wedding in early 1969. It’s tempting to say ‘tea cosy’, but really it’s an ornate pill box, originally popularised in the mid 60s by Jackie Kennedy.

What is currently on show is just a tiny percentage of the city’s huge collection of garments and accessories, hardly surprising considering that Kansas City’s garment district in its time was second in size and importance only to New York City’s. Quoting from the museum’s website “The Kansas City Museum has one of the largest and best represented collections of clothing materials in the Midwest, including couture gowns, day dresses, uniforms, overalls, shoes, hats, buttons, and everything in between,” Kansas City Museum Director of Collections and Curatorial Services Denise Morrison said. “Additionally, the Museum collection includes examples of many kinds of quilts and coverlets. The enhanced programming opportunities are endless and will strengthen the Museum’s educational impact. We look forward to partnering with other museums and academic institutions to serve students and scholars.”

The amalgamated collections of the city and the society will benefit greatly with the application of modern display methods and well designed educational materials.

From what we saw, this is a typical historical society museum, where so often enthusiasm to share and educate generously outbalances good display principles. ( for example, the backdrop to the green dior gown is so unnecessary and quite distracting) However, hopefully in the hands of experienced curators it will soon be presented in more space using modern museum exhibit standards and techniques, where so often ‘less = more’

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Gramado, Brasil, In September!

Saturday, April 13th, 2019

Recently I was delighted to receive an invitation to teach at The International Festival of Quilt and Patchwork in Gramado, Brasil, the largest such event in South America. Although I have never been to it during the 20+ years it has been running, some of my quilts have gone there for exhibition. I always love teaching people my way of making patchwork without using patterns; that freehand organic-looking patchwork, which since the late 80s has become something of a contemporary tradition, spurred on in part by the Modern Quilt Movement.

When we went to live in Denver Colorado, a neighbour took me along to a local quilt guild meeting, I took some construction classes in american patchwork, joined a bee, and became hooked. While I was there, that great american quiltmaker, Nancy Crow, came to Colorado to teach a 4-day workshop on colour and design in quilt making. At the beginning of her workshop she taught us lay aside our rulers and pins and work freehand as a faster way to get through all the exercises we needed work through. It can be used to add strips and inserts, organic wavy, circular and arc shapes, all of which can add complexity to a design. Though I’ve modified some of her directions, and developed skills and ways of working beyond what she taught us, basically I’ve been piecing this way for about 30 years now, and am always happy to pass on what I know. The one-day classes will be:

(1) beginner improvisational patchwork, learning the basics to enable this level of freehand piecing:

Improvisational piecing beginners learn how to achieve such repeat units.

(2) advanced improvisational piecing, where students learn more complicated levels of making patchwork freehand:

Advanced improvisational piecers learn how to achieve such repeated units in their own designs

I have started taking lessons in Portuguese with view to being able to do the commentary to my demos in the language most students will be speaking !!

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Clear Vinyl !

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

Previously I mentioned I’d brought back some clear vinyl sheeting from my recent visit to Colorado. Look, it’s probably available here in hardware stores, but I haven’t been scouting around for it. The minute I saw it in Denver, I just knew I needed some, because I had been asking the store assistant if they had any faux black patent leather. Those two clauses are related only in that these are both non-conventional materials for an artist of layered quilted fabrics or fabric-like materials. They had no faux patent leather that I discovered and then used in ‘Land Marks’ 2016:

Land Marks 2016


Land Marks, detail – faux patent leather/vinyl, mylar backed ripstop nylon

but said they did have some ‘other vinyl things’, so, drawn irresistibly as a moth to a flame, I went to look, and found this clear vinyl. There were various weights. I chose the thinnest – wisely or not – it is heavier duty than cellophane, but thinner than the stuff used in a see-through makeup bags or one of those tote bags with colourful inner liners.

On Pinterest one recent morning, I clicked a link to someone’s work and though I looked hard just now, I just can’t find it again. Anyway, it was a small fibre construction, a sample I think, and sewn between two clear layers of clear vinyl. Seeing that spurred me to my first experiment with this terrific new stuff – I am so vulnerable to anything shiny!

I learned: (a) I need to find a way to control the evenness of the stitch (paper beneath it prolly) and (b) this has interesting potential as a ‘quiltmaking’ material. (c) Try hand stitch too.

I was reminded of the exhibition of Montevideo artist Lilian Madfes’ 2011 show in which I photographed this work:

I love this very innovative work – it’s not large, maybe a bit under 1m sq., and Lilian was very surprised to hear me say that I regard this as a perfect fit into the definition of ‘a quilt’ in the art quilt world today: “An art quilt is defined by SAQA as “a creative visual work that is layered and stitched or that references this form of stitched layered structure”. The word “references” allows for a broader understanding of the art quilt that welcomes growth and development of individual style.”

That’s all got me thinking, and again trying to mentally get past the visible hanging rod and sleeve thing that I’m perennially stuck on about hanging sheer textile works. (Eyelets? Sleeves?) My view is, if you can’t display them well/effectively, you shouldn’t bother making them at all… Or is that just being so narrow minded as to stifle creativity? Afterall, I could make a heap of these things and put them in a 3-ring binder … it wouldn’t be the first work I’ve presented in a binder:

Mixed media pieces pre-1987. Hand and machine embroidery.

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A Packable Souvenir From A Previous Life

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019

In downsizing from our now-sold house in Perth Western Australia late last year, we made many decisions to ditch (throw into the bulk rubbish removal bin) donate (piles of things went into special donation boxes for delivery to St Vincent De Paul) or keep (boxed up for storage until we buy another place) During the packing by a removal company, we each pulled a couple of things out of the packing ‘line’ to bring back to Uruguay. As a packable souvenir of a previous life, my caftan is a particular treasure.

I remember the day I bought it in a small shop in a Darwin NT arcade. The shop was a new venture and there wasn’t a great deal of stock, but the screen printed large bird totally grabbed me as being different and feeling very Australian; I immediately knew I simply had to buy this. I’ve worn it hundreds of times probably, though it has spent the last couple of decades languishing unused in our house in Perth Australia. Honestly, these days it’s a bit snug around the hips and the upper arms … but I would never ever throw it away, and it’s place in my textile collection is assured.

Tiwi Designs caftan, bought in Darwin, N.Australia, 1976.

These large screen printed birds, storks, are known across northern Australia as Jabiru; however, similar-looking but stockier true Jabiru storks are native to central and south America. This similar bird (but I think nicer, more elegant looking) is more properly called the Black-necked stork – and anyway is known to the Tiwi as the big bird, a simplified version of which is Tiwi Design logo.


Remember, it is years since I actually lived in my own country, so this Tiwi Design caftan prompted me to look up the brand to see how the company was doing, if indeed it it was still ‘there’. I found a lovely website about the art of the Tiwi people on Bathurst Island, just off the city of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.

When I read that fabric printing has been done on (Bathurst) Tiwi Island since 1980, I wrote to them, saying basically ‘I think it was earlier, actually’, and asking permission to publish a pic or two in this post. It was a bit earlier: daily newspapers in 1978 announced that the then Prime Minister’s wife, Tammi Fraser, had had several garments and outfits made up incorporating Tiwi Design printed fabric, to wear at appropriate times during overseas visits.  I always thought that was great, and imagine it was a helpful boost to Tiwi Design’s continuing success.  These days you can take a day trip across to the islands, see the printing being done, and learn something of the history and culture of the people living there.

After many years of being exploited by the tourism industry in particular, and generally having their legal copyrights blithely ignored, Australian Aborigines these days are right on top of the whole issue and have worked long and hard to educate the general public and successfully pursue those who breach intellectual property laws. I asked for and was given permission to use Tiwi Design website images, and my regular readers might not be surprised to find this is one I absolutely relate to:

Fabric available by the metre from Tiwi Design includes this design, though I am not sure who designed it – I particularly relate to its timeless, landscape-y quality. (Image from Tiwi Design website, reproduced with permission)

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