doodling with threads-TAST 17

De a movable feast

Straight stitch is very straightforward and i gave myself the freedom to indulge and play around a bit.i used a sample of some handwoven wool fabric that was laying around begging to be recycled. Then i realized why it had been laying around, i had had tension problems on the loom and one side wove longer than the other.One can disguise flops with some surface design right?
I airbrushed some color and did some stamping and then on with straight stitch.What a cinch working with this fabric! After leaving my eyes on the linen fabric counting threads, this was piece of cake.

De a movable feast

i still wanted to do some academic work and stitched a more traditional sample.i even used pink! Need i say it is not my favorite color? Does it show? The sample started with straight stitch and ended somehow in a satin of sorts. And there's some figurative work, in case you haven't noticed they are fishes. i used hand dyed perle cotton, silk doupioni, some rayon and the thich thread is tow linen.
The top sample is silk doupioni, silk floss and rayon.

THE BOOK

Got the book It arrived yesterday. Oversimplifiying it is about weaving graphically, something that i've been intuitively playing with. Now i can make educated guessess. Now i only need time to study it and a jacq.loom.

neki desu

thermoplastics2

Working with polyester (UGHH) here. i'll be giving a short workshop on textile resources and the chosen topic is using heat to transform fabrics. Of course one can use silk, but it's expensive and everyone will be uptight about ruining it. Plus these are 19 year olds.

So polyester be it
It holds well the shape and it's inexpensive.

The top photo has the ties in place and the other one shows the fabric without the ties. i dobut i'll use polyester again, but working these samples gave me some ideas for silk.will keep them on the proverbial back burner until the summer.

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Oh ! Those pretty colors!

Perhaps this has been circulating for a while, but my sister sent me the link this week,The Interactive Color Harmonizer You can work on line to design a color scheme using 2 principles:progression or the golden mean. Also check out Genesis One.2 a really cool application that can be either used on line or downloaded.It is a design tool for generating pleasing wave patterns. Yes, i know we don't need more gadgets, remember? So here am i contradicting myself but,in other words both tools can make life much easier.

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TAST 16- what's the name of this cutie?

It was such fun to work this Palestrina stitch!And it came out so cute. You can start on one side making a curve and at some point change the stems to the other side without looking sloppy. Love the effect because it's so fractal like.
i used tow linen- great txture but difficult to work with because it frays. Same for chenille. i also worked with silk, silk doupioni, wool and used red rayon for spunk.
This stitch will definitely go on my faves list.

neki desu

Life, questions and the art of living

As a follow up from yesterday's post about my dobuts and questions about following one's voice i got a message from Annica at Fabulous Threads with a link to Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto.
If you've followed the discussion all i can say is to check it out because it adresses some of my questions and then some more. In want of an analogy it is like a shot of good sparkling wine, or water for abstemious folks. Enjoy!

Today's illustration is a textile design i made months ago and will eventually get digitally printed, although i think that it needs to be simplified for a home printing job.

neki desu

stopping to reflect

This has been on my mind for some time therefore i'll address it point blank. Is it my own voice that i'm following or is it that i am following what's out there? I know that i want to make visually interesting textiles, but how much of all those techniques out there really contribute to what i want to create or are they just noise? Do they sit on the surface or do they really help convey something other than dexterity at best or confusion at worst?
Do i really need more yarns or another gadget to make x or y? Will the gadgets advance my work or will i just be jumping on the current bandwagon? Is it furthering my work or am i just making someone richer?
There are still more questions that i need to ask myself. Hope to find some answers.

neki desu

TAST 15 -if it's oyster stitch it's supposed to look like an oyster oi?

Yet,in the begining it didn't. i wasn't getting it right no matter how closely i followed Sharon's directions. Which part of the oyster? The shell? The inside? The actual oyster? If the shell i was getting that, flat, messy and shapeless. But it didn't resemble Sharon's pretty budlike stitches. Then she posted a link to Elisabeth's blog and i finally understood what i was doing wrong. i stared generating oysters and i began enjoying the stitch.i guess that my frustration tolereance level has decreased over the years.
For the sample i used silk cordonnet and silk flame from Dollmakers i am absolutely in love with their space dyed flame silk yarn.
i decided to leave the messy stitches since the challenge is a learning experience for me. As they say it's the journey not the destination.

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more catching up -TAST 14

Not terribly inspired here.Those twisted stitches are not among my faves.Being rather unskilled at embroidery i tend towards the more cleanly defined stitches because then my work doesn't look so sloppy. O.K. am I making sense here?
Here i used a heavy grist linen, DMC cotton and silk threads.By the way i got the DMC metallics and the glow in the dark threads.Now i need an appropriate project.
On with TAST week 15.

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against my own beliefs

Sounds pretty pompous, but i firmly believe that if one does not have the skill one should sample first and forget about rendering"the idea". My excuse is that i wanted to catch up with TAST
So here they are weeks 11,12.13.Week 14 will go in another post so that Blogger doesn't get upset with the photo uploading and starts acting up.It IS already acting up.

Detail of the left side gold, silk and cotton threads, stamping.

Detail of the right side silk and cotton threads, various grists and stamping.
The fabric is a handwoven silk crepe scarf that didn't meet the grade and it is being recycled. Not sure if the texture is appropriate for the excersise.
You can see the whole piece at my Flickr

neki desu

tropical nouvelle

It came as a pleasant surprise to find some restaurants in Puerto Rico involved in what i call tropical nouvelle. This is characterized by the use of tropical fruits, vegetables and tubers in an innovative way. One of my faves became the guava recipes . As a kid i'd pluck them straight from the tree and eat them, but nowadays boiled in a very light syrup,mashed and strained and with a dash of black pepper, they make a delicious sauce to dip green plantain or yucca chips.
There's another twist to guavas, skinned,chopped sauteed with onions and used as stuffing for pork loin. Maybe a light balsamic vinagrette, heavy on the olive oil with lots, and i mean lots, of chopped cilantro would complement the sweetness of the stuffing.

neki desu

i'll make do with what i have-said she

But i'm such a sucker for beautiful yarns and threads that i could not resist these.
So i ordered them from Dollmaker through my friend Holly and they were waiting for me at my mom's when i got there. While there i must confess that i also picked up some glittery threads at Wallmart,where i avoid shopping, but i said to myself, just for once what the heck. Hope the breach of principles does not get me bad karma.
Now i have to make up for the missed TAST week stitches.
i'm thinking about cheating and rolling all of them into one single piece so that i can rehook to the pace in one week. We shall see.
Moving on to blogging. Came back to find Blogger sort of embeded (pun) into Picassa which means among other things that there's a space limit for one's picts.Then of course one can buy extra space. The end of free is here. Guess i'll have to get Flickr.

neki desu

back from the other side of the mirror

Finally back. Had a great time. Manage to eat all that incredible food and contrary to the fact i lost weight. Walking around Old San Juan with all those hills works wonders. Managed to see not all, but many of my friends.
Came back with lots of orchids, full of ideas, rested and relaxed and with a great tan right at the begining of April. Need i ask for more?
The photo is a traditional carnival mask and outfit.

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