It happened.
No, my bed didn't explode, taking my quilt with it, but because (I'm convinced) I said everything was going well the apartment gnomes decided to take off with my thread (or I misplaced it, or it rolled off my bed, whatever). So, now what do I do? I can go on in a different colour or tear my bedroom apart. I was using the pink from my other grad piece, and the pink just worked so well with this one, but I suppose I could grab a blue or a beige. Or put together everything else and wait until tomorrow to buy more thread to sew it tomorrow night (officially 1 day late). Blurgh. Dunno what I'll do, but I swear, once I get a little ways in with sewing with a new colour, I'll find the one I want right in front of me. This is not a new occurance. I will sip a tea and ponder.
Update: After tea, starting supper, then some polite asking/ begging of the apartment Gnomes to bring me back my thread/ help me find it, it was found. On the other side of my floor....
I'm glad too, the pink really does work best I think.
Showing posts with label menship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label menship. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Work In Progress: Menship & Friendship Part III
Ok, this post I will try to keep short as I have to run off to the studio to do more work!
Last time we left this project, I had finished digitizing and printing and was getting pretty excited about the results! Next step was no where near as fun, but just as necessary: ironing. See, these prints on fabric are only set once they've been ironed (kinda like the crease in your pants when you were a little kid and your mom INSISTED you have a crease). Otherwise the minute they get wet (ie washed) the ink runs and you're left with fabric that looks like a rough watercolour painting (maybe an idea to explore later, but not right now).
So, I set up an impromtu ironing board at home (put a towel over my coffee table) and spent my afternoon ironing fabrics.
In case you're wondering, the Chicago BlackHawks cap is most definitely NOT mine!
(side note: I realized after bringing my piece to school during the April 1st snowstorm, that I didn't iron it enough. Words got melty where the snowflakes landed. Apparently I need to iron 3-5 minutes for every section as big as my iron plate, so I think I have a few more hours ironing ahead of me!)
My next step was to get some sampling done. Ahh the dirty S word: sampling. Sampling is essentially testing out your ideas without committing yet to doing it on your finished work. Sampling is essential because guaranteed, nothing EVER winds up working out the way I saw in my head. Tedious sometimes, yes, but I embrace sampling: doing lots of it only makes my work stronger, I then have the confidence to work on my finsihed piece, plus I have documentation of the process, AND always wind up discovering something new that I may not use now, but will in the future.
For this work, I'm doing an overlay of quilt blocks that will have cut-outs where you can read small pieces of the letters. I want the letters to still be semi-private and secretive.
I'm a person who needs to see things, and squint at them in order to decide what I like. So, another good chunk of my day was spent cutting out some tester fabric in different size (6", 5", 4.5", 4", 3.5", 3") and laying them on my fabric to see what I like. I think I'm going with 4 or 4.5 inches, but realized I wanted a fabric with more translucency. I tried silk, but it was too "rah-sha-sha" for this quilt about a country adolescence. So, back to the drawing board.
What did I decide to go with? Well, be prepared for more sampling exploration next time!
Also - I laid out my quilt base for the first time and decided I wanted it bigger, so more printing.
Last time we left this project, I had finished digitizing and printing and was getting pretty excited about the results! Next step was no where near as fun, but just as necessary: ironing. See, these prints on fabric are only set once they've been ironed (kinda like the crease in your pants when you were a little kid and your mom INSISTED you have a crease). Otherwise the minute they get wet (ie washed) the ink runs and you're left with fabric that looks like a rough watercolour painting (maybe an idea to explore later, but not right now).
(side note: I realized after bringing my piece to school during the April 1st snowstorm, that I didn't iron it enough. Words got melty where the snowflakes landed. Apparently I need to iron 3-5 minutes for every section as big as my iron plate, so I think I have a few more hours ironing ahead of me!)
My next step was to get some sampling done. Ahh the dirty S word: sampling. Sampling is essentially testing out your ideas without committing yet to doing it on your finished work. Sampling is essential because guaranteed, nothing EVER winds up working out the way I saw in my head. Tedious sometimes, yes, but I embrace sampling: doing lots of it only makes my work stronger, I then have the confidence to work on my finsihed piece, plus I have documentation of the process, AND always wind up discovering something new that I may not use now, but will in the future.
For this work, I'm doing an overlay of quilt blocks that will have cut-outs where you can read small pieces of the letters. I want the letters to still be semi-private and secretive.
I'm a person who needs to see things, and squint at them in order to decide what I like. So, another good chunk of my day was spent cutting out some tester fabric in different size (6", 5", 4.5", 4", 3.5", 3") and laying them on my fabric to see what I like. I think I'm going with 4 or 4.5 inches, but realized I wanted a fabric with more translucency. I tried silk, but it was too "rah-sha-sha" for this quilt about a country adolescence. So, back to the drawing board.
What did I decide to go with? Well, be prepared for more sampling exploration next time!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Work in Progress - Menship & Friendship
I've spent many an hour the last few days going through old letters sent clandestinely during highschool class, scanning them, straightening them, and will soon be printing them... on fabric!
Why all the care for old highschool letters? Well, I'm a hoarder. 5 years ago I would have just been consider a "packrat" but apparently the language has changed and feels a lot more shameful. But, it doesn't bother me. I'm not dirty about it, I just hang on to things - I'm a very sentimental person, and always have a feeling something will be used, if not now then later on. I've had these jars stuffed with folded old letters from highschool hanging around my childhood bedroom for 10+ years, and always look on them when I'm home. Sometimes I'm terrified someone's going to go through them (ridiculous I know, cause no one would, and even if they did, why would it matter? It's not exactly nuclear secrets squirreled away), sometimes afraid myself to go though them, and sometimes needing a little shot of the past. But finally, my pack ratting has paid off and these old letters are getting used in my new body of work.
This is just a little sneak peek, but the jist of the work is about how as women, we glorify the idea of manship (maybe men glorified ladyship too, but I don't know I was never a highschool boy) but really it's our friendships that get us through and no where is this idea more prevalent than in highschool. We killed so much time having crushes, have newer crushes, going back to old crushes, talking about boys, wondering about boys, dreaming about boys, but we did all this together, cementing (and sometimes breaking) our friendships over it. Always wanting to be in love, and thinking love was an oasis in an otherwise hormonally crazy world, but the it was the boys who made us crazy and our friendships (lady friendships and boy friendships) that made us strong, and got us through those insane years.
Here are some sneak peek pictures from my digitizing, and yes these are all excerpts from old letters, wrote over 10 years ago, folded up, and passed conspiratorily from one to another in the halls, across the lunch table, or in class.
Not just a few of them ask whether or not I'm keeping the letters, threaten that I'd better, and ask what I do with them. No way did I, or anyone else, think they'd wind up digitized and on display over a decade later. Also, not a one of them forsaw what any of our lives had in store. What a wonderful, mysterious thing this life is.
For more pics, check out the jump.
(apparently I can't make the jump work, so just look below)
Why all the care for old highschool letters? Well, I'm a hoarder. 5 years ago I would have just been consider a "packrat" but apparently the language has changed and feels a lot more shameful. But, it doesn't bother me. I'm not dirty about it, I just hang on to things - I'm a very sentimental person, and always have a feeling something will be used, if not now then later on. I've had these jars stuffed with folded old letters from highschool hanging around my childhood bedroom for 10+ years, and always look on them when I'm home. Sometimes I'm terrified someone's going to go through them (ridiculous I know, cause no one would, and even if they did, why would it matter? It's not exactly nuclear secrets squirreled away), sometimes afraid myself to go though them, and sometimes needing a little shot of the past. But finally, my pack ratting has paid off and these old letters are getting used in my new body of work.
This is just a little sneak peek, but the jist of the work is about how as women, we glorify the idea of manship (maybe men glorified ladyship too, but I don't know I was never a highschool boy) but really it's our friendships that get us through and no where is this idea more prevalent than in highschool. We killed so much time having crushes, have newer crushes, going back to old crushes, talking about boys, wondering about boys, dreaming about boys, but we did all this together, cementing (and sometimes breaking) our friendships over it. Always wanting to be in love, and thinking love was an oasis in an otherwise hormonally crazy world, but the it was the boys who made us crazy and our friendships (lady friendships and boy friendships) that made us strong, and got us through those insane years.
Here are some sneak peek pictures from my digitizing, and yes these are all excerpts from old letters, wrote over 10 years ago, folded up, and passed conspiratorily from one to another in the halls, across the lunch table, or in class.
Not just a few of them ask whether or not I'm keeping the letters, threaten that I'd better, and ask what I do with them. No way did I, or anyone else, think they'd wind up digitized and on display over a decade later. Also, not a one of them forsaw what any of our lives had in store. What a wonderful, mysterious thing this life is.
(apparently I can't make the jump work, so just look below)
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