at the cottage

At the Cottage!

I have moved to the country for the summer.  This is the first time I am able to spend so much time on  my own in this glorious place, to be able to focus on experimenting with my fibres.  I am working with MX dyes from PRO Chemical.  Here are a few of my first tries.

Copper wire project completed

This is the completed project framed.  I created the frame by inserting the weaving between pieces of wood and then joining them together.  This is difficult to photograph but I am hoping that, when hung, the sun will reflect off the wire and will give it a glow.

copper wire weaving

Weaving with copper wire on a loom

As we are in the last stages of completing the building process of my husband's new office, I am reminded that last year I worked on a loom project for installation into the 'building to be'.  Although it didn't take quite as long to create this piece as it did to build the building, it was at least as challenging! Threading each piece of copper wire without it getting tangled with it's neighbours was a remarkably difficult task.

These are a couple of images of the process of inserting the images into the woven wire.

I had the images digitally printed onto cotton and then inserted them between the weft and the warp as I wove.  They needed some extra re-inforcement to stay in place so I had to hand sew them in with the wire thread.

A Novel Idea

This is a full view of the whole book.  Each 'page' is 7.5" tall by 5.5" wide.

Our Guild Challenge :  "A Novel Idea"

I created a little book for our challenge and won 2 prizes for it.  This book has five pages with a front and back cover.  It opens accordion style, and the pages are joined by found sticks in my woods.

 

I took the notion of "Novel Idea" on a few different levels:  firstly I created a Novel, or I suppose if we want to be technical, it isn't much more than a novella.  With literature in it, since this is what I tend to read.  But too, the specific reference to Robert Frost's poem is also a reference to a novel idea, the road less traveled usually leads us on a voyage with novel ideas since this is what we seek.  I would like to think that I have pursued the road less traveled in my work.

I won 3rd place in the Advanced category and the "Viewers' Choice" award.  I am particularly proud of the viewers' choice because we have exceptionally talented and experienced quilters in my guild.  The 3rd place comments were that the judges were unhappy with the quality of my satin stitch in the binding of the pages.

baby quilt

A Quilt for Baby Thomas

 

 

I thought a wonky log cabin quilt would be the perfect fit for a new baby and his first time mom, since after all, first time mothering can feel quite wonky at times!

Here is a detail, the central squares were all embroidered by hand

This is the back, slightly modern artish, but you can see that I chose not to square off the borders too, to keep the whole thing rather 'off kilter'.