nemo ignorat

wild fish

When I began the Valentine's Day pillow, it was meant as an exercise in 3D cloth weaving. Due to the special cloth I used, it became much more but I still wanted to move on to other shapes. One shape in particular stuck in my mind: a fish.

I love fish. Ever since I was a child, I dream of being able to breathe under water. While other kids dreamt of flying, I dived and swam in my dreams and never needed to surface. I love our holidays at the seaside and if I was able to do as I wished, I would live somewhere at the Atlantic Coast. (Sorry, but not Germany's seaside. I am no great fan of North or Baltic Sea. In my mind they are no real oceans.)

Anyway, after finishing the Valentine's Day pillow, I cut out a fish shape from some old cotton bed sheet, sewed it together, filled it with some viscose/ramie-fibres I had in my stash for ages (I thought about spinning them but viscose feels really icky to spin) and began cloth weaving. Only to realise that cloth weaving and fish shapes don't go together well. Remembering my trip into mosaics (yes, yes, show me a craft I haven't tried yet) and the famous pointillists, I cut out small (about half an inch) rectangles and sewed them onto the fish shape and lo and behold, it worked really well. It takes a hell of a time, it took me about a week to sew on every scale but I love it. From nose to tail the fish is about 45 cm (about 17 inch) long.

I'm now at the stitching phase. Every scale is stitched down by a backstich/running stitch (whichever fits better). I'm still thinking about the eyes. She (yes, it's a female fish) already has eyes but they are not finished yet. But I do like her mouth.

There are more to come. My friend at the cupcake shop was asked to open it during a museum's event in july. (It's called 'Lange Museumsnacht' during which all museums in a town open all night long and you can enter all of them for a fixed rate.) And she asked me to provide her with a window decoration. We are now planning a bestiary of rag beasties or Assumentum Bestullae ;o)

DH called them cross stitch tatoos ;o) The cross stitch fabrics are remnants of my cross stitch phase. Originally I planned a pojagi curtain with all the old cross stitch fabrics. Maybe one day. Until then, she will be a tatooed fish.

The Assumentum Bestullae will be my way of using up the old synthetic dyed fabrics. My Procion MX phase is long gone and I think they are too garish now for clothing. But they look great on the fish I think ;o)

Make Love Not War

Valentine's Day is nothing we usually celebrate. Germany doesn't have its own Valentine's Day tradition. This year will see an exception.

I wanted to experiment with 3D cloth weaving like Jude showed it in her Boro Class. I am fascinated by the process and have some shapes in mind I want to put to test. So for trying out the method, why not make a heart shaped pillow for a friend of mine who certainly will appreciate it. I used some old tablecloth for the basis, stuffed it with some more old fabric scraps and then looked for appropriate fabrics, i.e. some pinks and greens. Pinks and greens are spring colours (and the signature colours of my friend's cupcake shop as well). Although I prefer not to dye with synthetic dyes anymore, I still have a lot of fabrics from my Procion MX days.

One special fabric found its way on the pillow: fragments from an old cotton blanket my father brought back from military hospital when he was wounded in WWII. Which made me think a lot about him while sewing and stitiching.

He was 20 when he was drafted. He didn't really have a choice. Deserting never was an option back then. My father's family lived in a barren rural mountain region for over 500 years. For over 500 years they were farmers, shepherds and butchers. Where should he go? So, he was 21 when they marched towards Russia, and in a way he got lucky. Somewhere on the way, he got caught by a shrapnel and lost his left leg at the thigh and parts of his right calf. For him, the war was over. That he survived the injury and was able to become an almost whole person with wife and three children and a job as landscape gardner for the city council, showed how resilient he mentally and physically was.

When I was born, he was already 46. Due to his disability and his age, he never was one of the active fathers running around with his children. (We went swimming together very often, in the water it didn't matter how many legs he had). But he was a good father nevertheless. And he taught me well. When I asked him as a little child, what happened to his leg, he told me, he lost it in the war.
"What is war, dad?" "War is bad."
It's a simple as that.

He died on his 88th birthday 4 years ago in February.

I think it is fitting to incorporate a blanket from a military hospital from one of the worst wars in human history into a little love present to Valentine's Day.

Make Love Not War

quilting

The cold is exhausting. Luckily we're on the western part of the Siberian coldfront but still, -15°C (that's 5° F for those who aren't metric ;o)) is really cold. Especially at 5 am in the forest. Fortunately, the dogs don't seem to mind. And no, they don't wear vests or anything. I'm the one in the seven layers of woollen underwear and sweaters and whatnot. I praise all ancestors who had the idea to breed sheep.

Due to the cold, I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be. A lot of my ironing is still lumping around in baskets but I descided it was time to work on my quilt again.

Two years ago, I've sewn DH a quilt. As it happened, I was unable to walk around much with a rather bad knee and 6 weeks to wait for the appointment at the specialist. (BTW by the time I had the appointment, the knee was better and we could start aftertreatment at once - and it most probably saved me from a knee surgery. Lucky me.) So I took the opportunity and made the quilt. When I asked DH about specifications, he just said: large and green. Well, that's what it is:

The larger pieces are hand dyed (synthetic dyes) bourette silk and the smaller ones small linen pieces I bought in bulk from a flax cooperative in Northern Germany some years ago. They sell (sold?) the leftovers from their tailoring in bulk. The quilt was sewn during those 6 weeks, while I was cooling my knee and watching the whole 7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Therefore I called it Forest Quilt or an Hommage to Gene Roddenberry.

The quilt stitiching was done with two different green linen threads, it has no batting/wadding but a flanell backing and really is warm enough. And it is about 2x2m (which is a bit more than 2x2 yrd). 

Why am I telling this. Well, first of all, I really like the quilt and wanted to show it to you. And secondly, last year when I went off to ISEND, I took a lot of hand dyed (natural dyes) patches with me to have something to do while sitting around. And the top was finished in december:

The patches are mostly vintage cotton and linen and some are bourette silk. The undyed fabric is from a bolt of vintage linen. Rather dense but wonderful fabric. Like the Forest Quilt, this one is about 2x2m as well, no batting/wadding and a flanell back. This time, I quilt with some silk threads and a hemp thread, some naturally dyed. And although I told myself after the Forest Quilt, I would never ever quilt such a large cloth again in one go, right now it is quite cozy underneath it.

Stitching on my quilt and watching and listening to Jude's magic diaries (I'm still behind schedule) made me think what I am doing.

I like complicated, colourful pieces. But my patchwork blankets are mostly functional and for warmth. Maybe my approach will change when I begin piecing a larger cloth together from all those experimental pieces, we'll see. I always was really bad at following patterns and trodden down paths.  Back then, I tried to follow patterns and tried to make things like the manual said they should be made. And I failed colossally. Always. So I began seeing patterns and rulebooks a bit like the pirate code, more an inspiration and as a guideline, which worked much better. And now I am on my way to really let go and go with the flow, so to say. I know, I wrote this before, but I still feel like I am standing on a cliff top ready to jump, not yet jumping. More like hopping up and down on the spot, opening my arms, ready to fly and shouting FREEDOM ;o)

Right now, some words are buzzing around in my head: neo-tribal, post-apocalyptic and most of all STELLIFEROUS.Weird combination but they all fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling and I think there is potential in them.

The cold has one big advantage: the night sky is crytal clear and indigo blue, with a bright yellow moon and lots and lots of stars.

another experiment

I am in an experimenting mood right now. I really have the urge to try new things, so I go with the flow and work on several new beginnings. The day before yesterday, I was mostly working on some vest pattern. I try to sew as many of my clothes as possible. So far I stopped only at Jeans (though I have a really nice organic cotton canvas ready for some new trousers already lying around) and underwear. Just the thought of the amount of underwear I would have to sew is a bit daunting. But we'll see.

One piece of cloth I regularily wear is vests. In summer only with a top underneath, during winter with shirts or even sweaters, vests are my staple clothes. And I really like my sewing to be functional. Just wearing accessories for the pure decorative effect is not my thing. To cut a long story short, when I looked at the elefant cloth, I thought, why not make it into a vest. So I worked out a paper pattern for a vest and realized, it wouldn't work on the elefant cloth. Which didn't stop me I just tried something different. Woven cloth directly into the vest pattern.

I wouldn't say it's perfect yet. It's not even what I imagined, it is still too geometrical, to organized for my taste but it's a start. I think, there is potential. But did I mention too organized? I will have to work out a way to let go.

I will be signing off until monday. I finally need to do some house work (my ironing basket already multiplied and Mum needs some attention) and I need to do some real stitching now. Not only the beginning of experiments but stitching and seeing where the cloth wants to go.

And I added something to the About section. Bits and pieces about me. In case you wonder who is writing. Somehow I don't find a way to open a comment section there as well. Still getting used to typepad's CMS.

See you all on monday

still wandering

Ulrike

Blumenkind

free daughter of nature

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and then there was an elefant

One of my creative hurdles is that I like to stick to geometric forms. Nothing wrong with that, there is an abundance of ornamental work out there which is enormously creative. Just think of the wood carvings on old Breton furniture. Amazing. But as I see it, part of my journey could be/should be (?) to travel to unknown territories, step into the dark and unknown waters of my mind and find my way to new shores. Which I did this morning and lo and behold, an elefant appeared. It is still the rough shape of an elefant more like the shape you see through the fog (my brain fog concerning representational forms vs ornamental maybe?) but it begins to look like an elefant.

The fabric is rust dyed dish cloth linen. Very soft but still durable.

Now I just wonder, why an elefant ;o)

something old something new

I wanted to thank you all for the warm welcome. I am overwhelmed. Thank you.

Something New

Yesterday evening, I felt the urge to begin something new, some woven boro style thing. I am intrigued by the possibilities of fabric weaving. I like the look very much and how it handles. Most of the fabrics I have are vintage linens and cottons. Bedsheeds (definitely not usable for woven boro), cotton pillow cases and duvet covers, linen dishcloths and towels. Most are not exactly the lightweight stuff Jude recommends but some are still manageable.Especially the old and used dishcloths are so worn out that some of them barely stay together. They make nice weaving material.

The background is an old dishcloth, crush dyed in indigo and I wanted to keep the undyed parts intact.

Another detail I wanted to preserve, the monogram dyed really nice, darker than the rest.

I basted the piece last evening. My stitch is not exactly invisible but I used a dark blue and a white sewing thread. Somehow sewing threads accumulated over the years, so they usually are my default threads.

And this morning, while looking at the first piece, I began with another one.

Plain weave, the background fabric is some vintage damast cotton, indigo dyed and then overdyed in oak bark, which gives it a slightly greyish green hue. The other fabrics are dishcloths and some other vintage damast dyed in indigo, the red is cochenille and the darkish purple is logwood.I love the fraying. Linen threads are really dense and they usually don't dye through. At least not when you're dipping only two or three times to keep it light blue. When you tear them, the fraying sometimes is still lighter or even white. And I think that looks fabulous. Very organic.

The reason all those colours work well together is that they are all natural colours. Somehow you can't go wrong when you combine the most unlikely colours as long as they are all natural dyed.

Producers of synthetic dyes know that, which is why you have colourways (Ashford acid dyes for example come in winter and summer hues - this way the colours of one colourway will always match) and you shouldn't combine different synthetic dyes by different producers. Everyone of them works in a special colourway and combining colourways from different producers can look quite garish.

Something Old

This is the thing I originally wanted to work on when I began something new last evening.

 

It is the front of a bag I began many moons ago. When I was still working with synthetic dyes ;o)

The blue part is from an old silk shirt and the white part is some vintage cotton pillow case. The colour parts are reverse appliqued and are vintage cotton dyed with synthetic dyes.

This is the back. Still the same old silk with some stitching. I love spirals.

The inside of the bag is made from an old flanell shirt and its two breast pockets. One can never have too many pockets in a bag ;o)

And here is a detail from the front. Here the thread is some indigo dyed linen thread.

Still wandering 

Ulrike

the first step

Every journey begins with one step. But usually there are already several steps behind you, some places you come from when you decide to begin your wanderings.

I'm already knee deep in hand sewing. Equipped with a great dislike of machines, I used to hand sew shirts and skirts and even trousers many years ago during my frugal time at university. After some time without much time for texile crafts, I returned to my fibery interests one day in december about a decade ago when I ordered a handspindle and some fibre. I began spinning, dyeing, knitting, weaving the usual stuff and then, I some years ago, I returned to sewing. 

I feel content when I stitch.

Several years ago, I dived heads on into natural dyeing and sometime later I realized I'm a natural dyer with a day job. And then I realized, I love dyeing fabrics. So my love for fabrics, for sewing and for natural dyeing intertwined.

I am far from being a master or something like this. I am learning, wandering among fabrics and experimenting with possibilities. And since I seldom have the opportunity to travel, I enjoy online workshops and online classes.

Last weekend, I enrolled in several online classes over at Jude's. Since my other blog is (mostly) German and a hotchpotch of all possible fibre crafts, I wanted to start something new, English only and only about my dyeing and my sewing.Let's see how this works out. As I said, I'm experimenting here.

And since no blog post is complete without pictures, here are some of past and present stitchings:

into the woods, neo tribal art cuff

into the woods 2 - neo tribal art cuff with encouched horse hair

buttoned up - the desert series

A coat I am working on now for several years. It was finished at one point but I didn't like to wear it. During the last two weeks I added some changes it feels better now. Come summer I will see how it actually wears.

Well, this is a small view into my past endevours. I'm working on some new things, I will see what path they will take.

I haven't done much modern boro like weaving and stitching yet. Up until now, I just dived into the online classes and immerged into the texts, videos and whisperings. Just listeining was inspiring and I have some ideas for larger cloths. Maybe another jacket, something different than the above. And then there are some old beginnings I found yesterday while cleaning the bedroom. Really old beginnings. Maybe I will rip them or incorporate them into something new. I don't know yet.

 

As I said, it's the first step of a journey.