Bats in the belfry

Yarn-y goodness at Purl SoHo, NYC

While in New York back in late April I visited the much heralded Purl in SoHo… as a sometime-crafter (sort-of) it would’ve been daft not to, and I was not disappointed! They have a great selection of fabrics of which I was especially drawn to the designs (new to me) of Etsuko Furuya, and in particular this wonderful ‘Bat’ design…

I couldn’t resist buying half a meter of it with a view to turning it in to a couple of cushion covers. Finally, almost two months later, I found a spare several hours (I’m not a quick sewer!) to do just that. I’m very happy with the results because I cannot help but smile every time I see those nifty bats flitting about in their turquoise sky (and sitting on the floor – often my preference – has become even comfier :)

Here are some more of Etsuko’s beautiful, quirky fabric designs…

‘Leaf’ in (l) grape & (r) grey

(l) ‘Flower Bed’ in aqua blue & (r) ‘Bird to Hang’ in oxblood

(l) ‘Animals’ in raspberry & (r) ‘Cobweb’ in black

(l) ‘Bus’ in natural & (r) ‘Camera’ in turquoise

I’m particularly keen on the designs combining creatures and slightly abstract, organic shapes (like the ‘Bat’ design!) but you gotta love the old-school cameras and buses too!

The 8 fabric swatch images above were sourced from superbuzzy, an online store for Japanese fabrics. Their full range of ‘Echino by Etsuko Furuya’ fabrics can be found here >

And Etsuko’s fabric design website can be found here >

Winter valleys

This project has been a l-o-n-g time in the making!

I block printed the fabric at the end of April, after being inspired to do so by a ‘happy accident’ encountered when I made these at the end of last year.

After heat setting the printed fabric I put it away and forgot about it for a time. In mid June I hauled it out again, cut some of it to size for a 50×50 cm (± 20 in) cushion cover and started to embroider a sparse little forest of winter trees (once again, as per these, and perhaps inspired by these).

I haven’t attempted embroidery for many moons (apart from adding details to the faces of a peculiar little gang of reprobate cats I made several years ago – which, against my better judgement, I’ll show you tomorrow :)… but I digress) and wasn’t sure how I’d take to it. I remember hating embroidery when made to do it as part of ‘needlework’ classes in junior school (a long time ago!) but this time around I found it a very enjoyable activity – the gentle process of (essentially) drawing with hundreds of tiny stitches is very meditative and relaxing… as I hoped the finished design itself would be.

Once the trees were all stitched I braced myself for the final hurdle – inserting a zip! I’m an extreme novice sewer and have never worked with zips before, and for some reason I’d built this up in my mind as an impossible and insurmountable task.

I won’t say it was a breeze but will say, for anyone reading this who might’ve similarly convinced themselves of the impossibility of inserting zips, that it wasn’t that bad. *

Zips!… not as gut-wrenchingly terrifying as I thought

 

‘Winter valleys’ cushion cover… finally completed!
And (below)… looking almost summery :)

 

* Zip help:
I followed instructions in the ‘New Complete Guide to Sewing’ (which is a great resource, albeit with some dodgy 80′s styled photos) and a photocopy, which my Mum brought when she was visiting in June, from (I think!?) the 1977 publication ‘The Reader’s Digest Family Book of Things to Make and Do’ (I have very fond childhood memories of this book! Sadly long out of print). My Mum also talked me through the process while she was here, which was no doubt invaluable in making the actual doing a few weeks later less scary.
Thanks Mum!

Secret societies

A little while ago I visited Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum for the Vodou: Art and Mysticism from Haiti exhibition. I didn’t know a great deal about Voodoo (or Vodou, as it is known in Haiti) and, like a lot of people, had a fairly one-dimensional and clichéd idea fuelled by the misrepresentations and sensationalism of Hollywood and its ilk. Although my knowledge is undoubtedly still hazy I now understand that it has its origins in the displacement, fragmentation and violence of the African slave trade. Many different cultures and ethnicities were uprooted from Africa (in this instance mainly from Western and Central Africa) and forcibly transported to the island then called Hispaniola (now Haiti & the Dominican Republic). Under slavery African culture and religion was brutally suppressed (as was that of the island’s indigenous population, the Taíno), and on the plantations people were routinely worked to death.

Over time people pooled their disparate religious knowledge to form a new unified religion which, by a process of syncretism, combined (and morphed) the spirits and beliefs of many different African cultures, of Taíno culture, and along the way incorporated elements of Roman Catholicism. (Initially the slaves were obliged to disguise their lwa – spirits in the vodou pantheon – as Roman Catholic saints because their ‘pagan’ religion was forbidden… and some of these saints stuck).

Of course religion has always been, among other things, a way of seeking solace or refuge and has provided many peoples with a coping mechanism in times of struggle and adversity, but I was struck by what a crucial role Vodou played in the lives of the oppressed, in the first slave uprisings, and in eventually achieving independence (in 1804). During the 18th Century Vodou societies played an important part in the uprising of the slaves against the French, imbuing people with the strength to pursue (and fight for) their freedom, and the Bizango ‘secret society’ was one of the most important in this struggle.

The exhibition consists of approximately 250 artefacts and works of art drawn from the collection of Swiss-born, long-time Haitian resident Marianne Lehman and includes some very beautiful embroidered & sequinned flags, clay and carved wooden sculptures representing various lwa (two pictured above), a fascinating array of pake (packages of herbs and other materials wrapped in cloth, stitched or bound with ribbons, usually associated with cleansing and healing powers), and an extremely compelling army of life-size Bizango warrior figures.

These figures represent the powers, and in some cases the spirits, of the Bizango freedom fighters. They are sewn in predominantly red and black cloth and carry the traces of wounds, as serially inflicted upon the slaves; ropes and chains are symbolic of the bonds of slavery but also restrain the terrifying fighting powers that are contained within the figures (which should only be unleashed with purpose and care!); the heads are real human skulls covered in cloth; pieces of mirror sewn into the eyes and on to the figures’ garments protect against harm & evil but also refer to the spirit world. These smoky mirrors, oxidised over time, reflect mysteriously and certainly contribute to a powerful sense of being in the presence of some sort of gateway between worlds.

Standing ‘alone’ in the dark amidst this army was a deeply moving, if unsettling, experience. If you’re in Amsterdam I would highly recommend a visit to this exhibition, on until 10 May at the Tropenmuseum. If you miss it in Amsterdam there’s plenty of opportunity to catch up with it: after May the exhibition moves on to the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, in 2010 it goes to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and finally in 2011 to the Űberseemuseum in Bremen. At the end of 2011 it returns to Haiti, where it will be given a permanent place in a new, planned museum.

Handbags at dawn!

If you’re here looking for some fresh content that doesn’t involve creatures preserved in jars I’m afraid to say that I’m still working with that fabric (I did order a lot of it, and I do work very slowly!). I’m trying out different applications to see how the fabric works in practice (both in terms of visual design and fabric weight/drape etc.) and my most recent experiment is this bag.

 

I’m not much of a ‘handbag’ person (handbag in the “lady’s purse” sense of the word), but in order to progress my meagre sewing skills I wanted to try something a little more adventurous than simply sewing two rectangles together and adding a strap, so I worked with a ‘handbag’ pattern from Amy Karol‘s “Bend the Rules Sewing“. I’ve used my Curiosity Cabinet fabric for the outside of the bag and black 100% cotton for the contrasting pleats, inside of the straps and lining. It’s interfaced with cotton flannel (as recommended by Amy in her book) making the whole thing a bit sturdier. And it has a handy internal pocket (but if I were to make this bag again I would certainly make the pocket a bit deeper, and possibly add a few extra ones specifically sized for pens, phone etc.).

 

The pattern doesn’t give any dimensions for the finished product (I guess anyone with half a brain and a bit of sewing experience could figure this out from the cut fabric sizes) so, as a non-handbag person, I was very pleased that its finished size is quite large (± w42 x h30 x d10 cm) and therefore potentially more useful than your average handbag - big enough to hold sketchbook, drawing materials, laptop, camera, flask of tea and any other arty-day-out essentials, and just the right size to be used as a carry-bag for the daily grocery shop…

Material learning curve

My Spoonflower printed ‘Curiosity Cabinet’ fabric arrived at the end of last week! Although it was exciting to see the design on great lengths of fabric (in retrospect I ordered w-a-y more than I should have, but at the time I thought I’d minimise the postage costs!) I was rather disappointed with the end result. This has as much to do with me being a textile design novice as it has to do with the current limitations of the digital printing technology used by Spoonflower (and not forgetting that the Spoonflower service is still in Beta, so we’re all learning!).

The final printed fabric lacks a fineness of detail which I had hoped would be there (i.e. it’s in the original design and I’ve seen such fineness of detail on other printed fabrics). I was also disappointed by how ‘washed out’ the final printed colour is, as compared to the colours I had chosen (a lovely dense blue-grey and a pale bluish eggshell colour). I think the pale colour reproduced fairly accurately but the darker colour is a bland and non-descript shadow of itself. As a result the design loses its ‘pop’. I feel the design really needs the strong contrast to work, and in retrospect (had I known quite how much the darker colour would shift) I would have used only one printed colour with the white of the fabric as the second colour, in an attempt to better maintain the level of contrast. Spoonflower do state on their website that true blacks and very saturated colours may not print correctly, but I had hoped the dark blue-grey I’d selected would be OK (not being a true black, and not being particularly saturated). Unfortunately this wasn’t the case.

As already mentioned I’m a complete textile design novice so do not pretend to understand the complexities of how different combinations of printing technologies and fabrics may affect the quality of the finished product. I would like to be able to read more about the practical limitations of the digital print process/fabric combo on the Spoonflower website but haven’t found the information I’m after there, so I was very happy to find this thorough and informative review of the Spoonflower service over at CicadaStudios (written by a textile design pro!). It answered a lot of my unanswered queries and means I’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions about any future designs I hope to have printed by Spoonflower. Their service has great potential and I’m sure it will only improve over time.

All of that said, I was very keen to start making stuff with my fabric so I dusted off the sewing machine (I’m a sewing & sewing machine novice too!) and set to work making a couple of simple cushion covers. The colour may not be quite what I’d hoped but it’s an uncanny match for our existing sofa…

And the cushions have already come in handy making a normally uncomfortable outdoor wooden chair much comfier while I took advantage of some recent (and so far rare) summer sunshine!