Gypsy Doll Challenge

These purple, orange and gold trimmings arrived last week in the mail. I requested these so that I could participate in the gypsy doll challenge at the Quilt Show in Houston this November. My inspiration is this portrait by Nicolai Yaroshenko; the colors seem just right. I'm hoping for some further inspiration now, since I don't know how to pose the doll or how to create the light, which is so much of what I love about this painting. The casual spirit will be my main challenge. Every time I try to make something with a relaxed air, it never turns out right. It'll be fun in any case.

Banksy -- love this.

I wholeheartedly agree with Banksy who says, "Graffiti doesn't always spoil buildings. In fact it's the only way to improve a lot of them." Regarding the CANS Festival this year in London in an abandoned tunnel, he said "In the space of a few hours with a couple of hundred cans of paint I'm hoping we can transform a dark forgotten filth pit into an oasis of beautiful art."

This event on May 4th, 2008 was blogged and photographed by Pinewood Design, someone in the UK interested in art, politics, computer stuff. Anyway, half the time I don't know how I even find this stuff, but I'm glad I did.

I'm a fan of graffiti some of the time. I hate it when it's just a tacky little tag on someone's mortgaged property. I love it when it's artistically rendered on a building so dilapidated and unnoticed it has become part of the public domain from sheer neglect. There's some soul out there who's willing to invest a hundred dollars in paint and a few nights to make it his/hers and love it to life.

Let me tell you, you never see it here I live (chi chi west Austin) but I go gaga when I happen on a small beauty painted on some electrical box in town. The chanciness of the act, the cruel and beautiful impermanence of the act, the possibility of nothingness makes me giddy.

A Sewing Structure for Fashion Design Wannabes

Today I played with an idea which started brewing as my daughter and her friends began getting excited for Season Five of Project Runway. I created a simple little softie puzzle so that she could play with some curvy shapes and piece them together. There is only one way these pieces go together, so the challenge is to make an enclosed structure -- a box of sorts, though not your typical box.

I'm so not a fashion designer (not even a good clothing sewer) but I'm presenting a challenge to the newbie fashion designer. I'm not a master at this but I do know that your mind does a little mechanical bending when you create and sew a sleeve to a shoulder, for example. The seam curves; a simple fact. You must sew with the curve, from outside or within the curve, your choice. How do you decide? How long is the curve? Is is the same on both edges? See what happens when you stitch from the outside of the box and the inside. See how curves match up to straight edges and opposite curves (convex to concave).

Since I have learned almost every thing I know by making mistakes, I though it would be fun to make a simple sewing structure challenge so that my daughter could explore these challenges on her own. All she'll need is a bit of embroidery thread or pearl cotton and an embroidery needle. The pieces are made from fabric formed around shapes of soft but firm craft foam. I added a bell to the finished structure just for fun -- the finished structure will jingle when you pick it up! --but I think this project will be delightful for her to make and embellish on her own.

I'm going to let her choose a color scheme for her room and decorate it as she likes. It will be fun to stitch it up and form it in her small hands as she goes. The foam will provide more structure than simple fabric so it will be easy to handle. Furthermore, she will have to use an actual needle and thread (the reality of making stuff from fabric!) and not just a pen to make sketches of cute clothes she dreams up.

I hope she likes this! If she does I'll put a few on etsy and see what other kids think of this sewing structure puzzle.

A Gesture Transformed

Happy Birthday, Red White and Blue!

The gesture doll from a few posts back is finally complete. The image which kept coming to mind was from an old painting of Liberty on a battlefield (I can't remember who painted it, but I will find out.) She was ultimately my inspiration. I painted the doll and costumed her in a red white and blue ensemble. The hair is blues and whites, the bustier is blue crochet adorned with a sheriff star and a sea star. The big blooming skirt is made from red fabrics and white silk printed with pages from the constitution. In her outstretched hand is a star spangled baby.

An early Fourth of July gift celebrating US, THE PEOPLE.

More Stick Dolls

Stick Doll Project

This is one of the stick dolls I've been making these last two weeks. The Austin Fiber Artists asked me to put together a one-day doll class for July. I'd been thinking on this for a while -- how to offer a class which would allow a beginner to discover the joy in creating a doll in one day.

If I teach my style a doll probably cannot be made in one day. It would be too time consuming and tedious. Plus, you never know what you're going to get. You might see the head and decide on a costume or surface design which you never considered before (which would require going back home and getting new materials). So a full doll in one day was out.

With these stick dolls I'm pretty sure I landed on a project which will take a full day and guarantee the participant a challenging, rewarding and fun experience. Hopefully she will want to continue the process and make more, maybe move on to bodies and hands. In any case, it's a workshop designed to teach the basic doll head, needle sculpting, eye placement and the attachment of the neck to the head which uses a stitch which is repeated often in the making of a full doll. The workshop will give exposure to doll tools, the threads and types of materials used, where to place the pattern on the grain of the fabric for different features, etc. As I was working through the workshop day I discovered just how much I'd learned about doll making, all the trial and error I'd gone through, and I realized that I had landed on a style which is my own and which I can actually share. It's been exciting.

The more sobering part of the process is that I realize I can't offer this workshop to someone who's never sewn before, since the sewing is tricky and requires curves and darts, something a beginner wouldn't enjoy. I also can't expect everyone to have the tools you need (hemostats, stuffing tools, doll needles). Finally, I can see so many gaps in this process, areas which I haven't seemed to master myself. I know how many times I really screw something up and I just have to make it work by adding some extra feature, or glue! I'm a bit worried about not truly being expert at this. I'm thinking of bringing in my box of mistakes so people know what they're in for. Hopefully, the fiber artists will understand, since it's really just a play date with friends at this point. I'm going to see how it goes and then decide if it's something I can teach others.

Quilted Portraits

Pamela Allen is a Canadian art quilter/teacher whose workshop I was lucky to attend yesterday. For 6 hours we quickly worked on compostition, line, color while making 4 small art quilts. Her teaching method is friendly, quick and intuitive; I can tell she has had extensive art training because she really is not shy about editing and offering helpful criticism. Part of the workshop included time to hang all the work after each hour-long "assignment" and critique what we made. I really loved it.

This collage is composed of portrait quilts we made. Mine is the witch in the black hat.

It's so inspiring to work alongside other people on projects like this. If you can't get away for an art retreat I wholeheartedly recommend an afternoon with an artist who so graciously and enthusiastically takes her classes to you.

I thank my husband for taking over for me the second Sunday in a row so that I could play. He took the kids to a party at a huge rock-climbing/bowling/pool/arcade place and even stayed to play with the boys there. Wow.