Crafternoon, July.

Every afternoon this last week has been a crafternoon, and it has been fabulous.

After finishing a major work, I was having trouble starting anything else. That was fear of commitment, and a fear of the ol' blank canvas. How about some low-key, minimal risk pieces to increase my confidence, and re-focus?

Back to some kind of drawing board...

Here are a pile of my favourite books, depending on the subject...today's search was 'cross stitch', so we have Beeton's Book of Needlework (1870), Goldenhands no. 3 (1972), Best of Handmade by both Woman's Day and Woman's Weekly (1974 & 1991), and a book on calligraphy. I want to do some things with words.

Can you read this? So far, it says 'Pubic hair' 

So far in cross-stitching, I have discovered about myself one new thing; stitching the words adds weight to the statement. As a reader, and a wishful member of the intelligentsia, I can use words liberally to express meaning, and verbosity can be an issue. If you are going to spend 5 minutes picking out each letter in tiny stitches, what is said needs to mean something, at least to yourself.

For my first stitchery, I chose the phrase 'Pubic hair is normal'... There were other contenders, but when looking through one of the Best of Handmades I found a 'delightful monthly floral calendar' to stitch, and one of the flowers was the Thysanotus, commonly known as the 'Fringed Lilly'. Double entendre, anyone?

Left to right: the plan, the work, and the book I sourced the plan from.

Close-up

The studio space, i.e. the floor directly in front of the couch.

Nearly there....

Done! Now I just have to finish it off...

Altogether, this took a couple of hours an afternoon, for four afternoons in a row. I think this was a good way to end this visual version of writers' block. I have a bunch of new ideas, and a new way of making.

Pimp My Dress #1

I altered this dress for my birthday. I found it for $3 at an op-shop called the Good Samaritan. It is one of my favourites, as they have a $2 costume bin I dive into every time I am in the store. Costumes....more like every day casual wear! Also, the dress did not have a tag, and the woman asked "Is three dollars o.k....?" 

While it fitted well from the waist down, it was obviously sewn for someone with a smaller rib cage and breasts. I do not have any photos of me wearing the dress in this state, but imagine 10kg of potatoes in a 5kg bag. That is what I looked like in this dress.

So, then it was time to unpick the seams on either side of the back zipper, and attach two lace inserts. There was a little bit of lace left over from some other thing, so I measured two isosceles triangles and sewed them into the space where the seams were. It's hard to see, but I added approximately 10cm to the bust by doing that. I hand-sew everything, and looking closely you can see a pattern of Xs along the lace and down to the start of the tulle of the skirt. I did that because I thought running stitch would be boring, and I didn't have any thread in Insipid Pink.

Lace inserts and stitchery

So, then it was time to alter the bottom. Using lengths of tulle approximately 15cm wide by 1.5m long I made concertina folds 5cm long to add more volume to the bottom of the dress and sewed those firmly to the hemline.

From a distance

Front view

Back view

For the most part then I was done. I thought the uninterrupted pink material of the bodice was unflattering to my skin tone, so I sewed a length of lace around the top of the bodice, to break it up visually.

Finished dress modelled by the ever patient Puzzletits

Back view

Back detail

Lastly, there were a few rips in the pink tulle I needed to patch up. When you wear only secondhand stuff, mending is a permanent fixture of the landscape and finding a balance was hard with the tulle. How to mend the rips without destroying the delicacy of light pink mesh? Make it part of the detail of the skirt! I used a special swirly stitch* to make it look like everything I did was on purpose. Which it totally was.

Bam.

So, there is my birthday dress. 100% secondhand and reused material, maybe...20 hours work altogether? Worth it.

*button stitch, or blanket stitch, if you want to be precise.

Perversions/Adaptations

I have recently been thinking about playing on words, visual puns, and just being clever in general through skillful appropriation. This is in relation to textile works, and my creation of them. I am tentatively working towards something, but let's see where this goes.

A mighty woman with a hooked needle, whose thread
Is imprisoned patience, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her left hand
Glows world-wide skills; her blue eyes command
The air-bridged walls that her living room frames.
"Keep mass-produced articles, your storied consumerism!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your fibres, your threads,
Your huddled linens yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming closet.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my scissors beside the golden door!"

Adapted from 'The New Colussus' 1883, by Emma Lazarus

No artist is an island, entire of itself; every one is a piece of The Scene, a part of the main, if a part be washed away by the sea, it is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a house of thy friends or thy own were; any artist's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Making; and therefore never send to know for whom is about to make it big; they make it big for thee.

Adapted from John Donne, Meditation XVII
English clergyman & poet (1572 - 1631)

The path of the craftsmanwoman is beset on all sides by the size inequities of secondhand fabrics and the tyranny of Lindcraft. Blessed is she, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the rags through the valley of darkness, for she is truly her house's keeper and the finder of lost opportunities.
And I will strike down upon thee with great veloutine* and furious angora those who would attempt to pervert and disrupt their artworks. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my velour upon thee.

*velvety corded wool

adapted from the 'Ezekial 25:17' spiel by Samuel L Jackson, Pulp Fiction 1994.

Crafternoon, June.

The ingredients

Old shoulder pad + scissors = cut up shoulder pad and a piece of foam for an ink pad.

Milk bottle lid...and there's my ink pad.

Got my letters lined up and ready to go.

This afternoon I was lettering some 6cm x 4cm tags from a recycling paper experiment from a few months ago.

Needles Hooks Pins

Adding images to the opposite side of the tags. 

About a year ago, I hollowed some books. The paper I made was from those recycled scraps. That paper was made into tags. I had saved the most interesting images during the hollowing out process, and I used these in the tags.

  

This was the wee store I had on the 25th at Metro Cafe. If you look closely, you can see the tags made from hollow books, on the hollow books. I love circles.

Suzkel Harjester: a recipe for artworks.



Timms' Introduction



What is the difference between an everyday object and a work of art? An exhibition at the Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE by local artist collective Suzkel Harjester attempts to describe the difference between the two in the recent exhibition Timms' Regret. Their answer, as I understood it; is nothing. To create the conditions to make a perfect, sanitary, classically contemporary work of art, you need as follows:

White walls

Clean floor
Hanging wires

Plinths

Instructions:

1. Combining ingredients within room, mix well and apply generously and evenly throughout intended space.

Craft 2

Harjester has attempted to bring to the fore a sad observation about contemporary art; any object is acceptable as art when you apply this formula. Similar to the phenomenon of all organic matter becoming edible when inside a hot dog casing; it is about the look of the thing, and audiences swallow almost everything that is served in this format.

Unfortunately, the line between clever statement on the state of contemporary art and found object installation has been blurred irreparably for me, and I found myself just not getting it. The exegesis, instead of enlightening me to any real artists' reason, was too obscured with high-end art jargon and execu-speak for me to ascertain any true meaning. And maybe that was the point.

Exegesis

I found myself treating the space with reverence, the forced silence and stillness as oppressive and coercive within an enclave beside a classroom as found within a State-funded gallery.

Empty Vessel and Ivory Tower #2

The objects on the walls and plinths are unnecessary, as the institution containing contemporary artworks is what is being exhibited by Harjester - and by the sterility of the space and works, I found it wanting in the ways that contemporary art is often accused of being - it is too theoretical, too niche, too alienating.

You know each object has a meaning,  but it is difficult to ascertain. Timms' Introduction - the death of traditional forms of art making? Craft 2 - impressing the importance of the art making process? Empty Vessel - the emptiness of the artist, seeking to fill the void with their works? Delicious Irony - the importance of stimulants to many?

Craft 1

Ultimately, the exhibition Timms Regret was difficult, because it made me consider high-end concepts when I didn't really want to. I may now think understand what Harjester was trying to say, but I prefer displays of craftsmanship over high-end theory. This exhibition was too easy, and the explanation too hard. As an audience, I want the reverse. Then again, this is maybe where Harjester has wanted to place us, and what they have wanted us to think. It's all just a bit too...meta.

Fairy-ring 2, done and dusted.

So, it took approximately one month, and I have pretty much finished Fairy-ring 2. I say 'pretty much'  as there is about another hour of polishing (clipping the loops to make the pile) needed, and I have yet to sew a wee label on the back. I added about another single and double sheets' worth of material to complete it, and fortunately I still have enough left over to begin Fairy-ring 3; Emergence (working title). Stay tuned for those developments. I can promise armatures, more crochet and an interesting tangent.

Fairy-ring 2; an update.

So, over the last few weeks my work ground to a halt as I have started prac and moved house, but I have too much stuff I want to do so after some late nights working I am getting towards the end of Fairy-ring 2. I am helped by the amount of rags in shades of green I have managed to obtain. That being said, I still need more. It's a challenge of using recycled materials that I have not needed to consider until now.

Saturday night

So far, Fairy-ring 2 contains 3 medium-sized t-shirts, 1 pillowcase and 1 queen-sized bed sheet.

Sunday, and I have added another two t-shirts.

Monday, another single sheet and half of another queen-sized one.

This rug in particular has a lot of old bedsheets. It got me wondering about sex ghosts.

I have to clip the loops still to get that shag, which will take probably another 2 hours. But it's downhill from here, phew. On to the next one...