A break from serious stuff 2

My second project was birds. I like birds.

I didn't bother finishing my first attempt as it was clearly misshapen, this was my second. Felted wool, stuffed with sewing scraps. The wool is coat-weight, so I just butted the fabric edges up against each other. Two identical pieces for the sides and head, and a bullet shaped piece for the bottom. The point of the bullet only came just up the front of the bird. The body was too slender and it didn't stand up at all.


I lengthened the bullet shaped piece to come up to just under the chin. The body looks right now, but the head is too small, at least for a corvid, which was what I was going for.

I also changed the stitch. I had been using herringbone, but since the thread only crossed the seam on top of the fabric the seams kept collasping inward if I pulled them too tight, making it hard to get the edges of the cloth to butt up against each other closely. I used the same stitch as used on baseballs here, not sure what it's called, other than 'baseball stitch'.


Expanded the head, tail's too short, and I didn't bother closing it. Melton wool, with baseball stitch. The green thread is tapestry wool. Stuffed with some indigo dyed unspun wool that got felted in a too-hot indigo dye bath.


A comparison shot which reminds me WAY too much of an old picture I have of dead corvidae laid out in a tray together.


This was my first attempt at a sewing it in a thinner cloth with an internal seam. I wanted to do a bunch of them as gifts and for my own Christmas tree, but ran out of time. Next year.

Black cotton twill, wood bead eyes, stuffed with warp thrums that were too short to use for tapestry weaving. I didn't add any seam allowance to the pattern (same as for the purple raven), to see how much I would lose in appearance. Looks more like a jackdaw than a raven. When it was nearly done I realized I was losing so much in the tail it almost disappeared, so I added on a piece on the bottom of the bullet shaped piece and made the top piece with a long wedge to be inserted into the seam that runs down the middle of the back. I'm not sure about the shape on the end itself, but I like the wedge bit. Would also mean being able to make tail feathers of a different colour than the body if I wanted.


A comparison between the two methods using the same pattern.

A break from serious stuff

After spending the better part of my time for 3 1/2 months trying to get pieces done for various gallery show submissions, I decided to spend December on less serious work (also proto-types and experiments for a possible Etsy shop in the new year!)


My first project was personalized cat toys for several cat friends. KC and Faith-Boo are two tortie cats, sisters of different mothers. Faith-Boo's has a draw-string on the bottom, and is filled with a draw-string baggie with catnip (for easier washing). KC is stuffed with mylar ribbons from a child's cheerleading pompom, for crinklies.

Linen, scrap embroidery floss, embroidery based on markings and eye colours of the original cats. Faith is rather diffused in her colouring, and since it's a catnip filled toy and she's called the Tiny Texas Tortie Tornado for a reason, I went easy on the embroidery on her. :) I couldn't resist going overboard on KC, though.


Missy's is also a draw-string-closed catnip toy. The tube is made of several sandwiched layers of cotton twill covered with beige striped linen, with a catnip baggie inside. The head is stuffed with sewing scraps. Her nose really looks like that, pink outlined in black.  It's adorable!


Smokey and BJ are two grey littermates, who, frankly, I can't tell apart in pictures. So they could tell who was who, Smokey has his beloved Mr Snail appliqued on, and I replaced BJ's tail with his Snakie toy. Both are made of linen, and the snail and snake are cotton and embroidery floss. BJ and Smokey's head are stuffed with sewing scraps, and there's a jingly ball in the bottom part of BJ. 


Sol is Smokey and BJ's litter-brother, pure black with a white 'milk-moustache'. I put a spring in his tail, 'cause he apparently likes them. Cotton twill, embroidery floss, stuffed with sewing scraps.



Batman is another black kitty (no relation). Cotton twill, and like the KC doll from the same pattern, stuffed with mylar ribbons.


Abigail is Batman's littermate (as are Reggie and Riley below). She's a calico, with a mostly black back and hood and white belly and paws. Cotton twill, embroidery floss, based on the same design as the Faith-Boo toy, without the giant floofy tail.


Reggie's a brown tabby, linen, embroidery floss, stuffed with sewing scraps, an extra long tail, I'm hoping he and BJ will like grabbing the long limbs and tails and drag the toys around.


Riley's also a brown tabby, but with a white belly, which you can sort of see here. Linen, cotton twill, with a jingly ball and sewing scraps inside. He's a bigger cube-cat than Sol, because I needed to get the ball inside.


Jack is actually my own cat. I have an idea for a Persephone toy as well, but didn't think of it in time to alter the toy I had already made her before I thought of personalized toys.

Cotton twill, embroidery floss, feathers, jingly ball. He's actually the same size as Sol, as I had figured out how to get the ball in with two sides open (mostly I sewed him as six separate pieces of cloth with the legs moved to the side, instead of front and back, which left me with two seams that met that I could leave open, that didn't need a limb or ears sewn in). The feathers are an experiment in how to secure them firmly in a toy, before I'm willing to make cat toys for sale that have feathers.

Or it would be, if I could get either of the little rotters to actually play with it!

The nice thing is, all these toys were made with nothing more than some small scraps of fabric I keep a bin of (most pieces are irregular and under 30cm square and are left over from other projects), some scrap bits of embroidery floss that were too small to wind on a bobbin, but too long to throw out, and the scraps from cutting out the toys themselves (plus a three-pack of jingly balls).

Several of these were reverse engineered from things I saw elsewhere. A few are so close to the original that I won't make them as anything but gifts, unless I find out they weren't original designs, others are changed so much I don't think they're even recognizable to their original inspiration.

"Mother"

"Mother"
2008
tapestry (pulled warp), found object-wool, chenille, linen, rock
24 cm x 14 cm x 14 cm


The rock is four shades of unspun wools in what appear to natural grey colours that I got secondhand somewhere. It usually comes in 3 to 12 ply of pencil rovings, I used 2 plys (plies? they both look wrong!), and it packs down really well at 12 epi, with a thick warp that should probably not be warped at higher than 10 epi, (I like using more epi for 3D pieces as it gives a thicker, sturdier body to the work).

The moss is chenille, left over from a classmate's project. I think Bronwyn, dyed by her too, I believe. The grass is just some of my usual tapestry wool stash, tied in a sehna (pile weave) knot.

The walls inside the figure are scrap beige linen, and the sand is wool sewn around thick cardboard. The wool is scrap too. I think cinnamon-dyed, left over from dye class experiments.

The rocks are from my stash.

I'm a little unhappy with the edges of the cave opening, but I haven't figured out how to change it without changing the appearance of the piece in a major way. I didn't want the edge of the interior fabric or the seam to show, but the whip stitch with a piece of the wool the body is made from causes the edges to curl. I photographed it with interior pins to straighten it, but I can't send it off like that, and don't really like the look of the edge so much either (it's more noticeable in person). Blergh. I'm really happy with this piece otherwise.

I just wish my cat would stop trying to steal it.

Memento Mori (Ilex II)

Memento Mori (Ilex II)
2008
14cm x 14cm
Tapestry, collage

"Memento Mori" is a Latin phrase meaning "Remember you are mortal". It's also the name a genre of art covering art created in any artistic technique which serves to remind the viewer of their mortality.

Ilex is the genus Holly.


The holly leaf piece is 9 1/2cm x 5cm, 20 epi, wool and cotton embroidery floss.

The holly branch piece is 5 1/4cm x 4 1/2cm, 24 epi, wool, silk.

The background is a blown up detail of the holly tree in the fifth tapestry in the Hunt Of the Unicorn Tapestries, a portion of which is the basis of the holly branch piece.

The holly leaf skeleton was collected from the yard of my old home in Vancouver. The leaves fall and over the course of a few months the skin dries out and peels away. I love these things, they're so cool. I'd never seen a leaf do that before. The other trees in the yard didn't do that.

Something a little different-embroidery

An embroidered piece I submitted to Stitch Spectacular, for their show in Jan.


"She Tosses Her Soul After Every Passing Feathered Thing"
2008
silk (damaged shirt), silk and cotton thread (salvaged from sweaters and scrap floss)

from "And This Is How She Feels", a loose collection of poetry

And this is how she feels
Tossing her soul after every passing feathered thing


Words were first embroidered in stem stitch, and the thicker parts of the font were then done in satin stitch over the stem stitch line.


Magpie feathers, stem stitched shaft, shadow satin stitch for the barbs.

I really shouldn't have used satin for such long stitches. It's been a long time since I did much embroidery and I had forgotten the messiness it can become. They're pretty neat right now, but I think I may need to couch them to stabilize them.

I'm not as happy with the sleeve holes as I'd hoped. They're done in a deliberately messy satin-like stitch, and were supposed to look a little like wings had been ripped off, but don't really. I'm not sure how I could fix that.

ED. This piece will be appearing in Stitch Spectacular, at Dimensions Gallery.com/, in Savannah, Georgia; Jan 9-Feb 4, 2009.

For Dea

Dea (Dianne) Heron 1948-2008

Dea appeared to have passed away in her sleep, with a book in her hand, on Aug 11, 2008.

She was a lovely person; intelligent, kind, with a wicked sense of humour, and even though I hadn't had the chance to know her well, I thought of her often. While she wasn't the first to introduce me to the world of textile arts, she was one of the people who first encouraged me to take it up again, which eventually led me into being a textile artist professionally. She was also the one to introduce me to the scaryscary world of fibre and needlework shows. Ten+ years later I still haven't used all the yarn I got that day....

Well, THAT didn't work

Remember this?

Not so much with the working. So I stopped halfway through, since I was under a deadline, and needed the other half of the warp for another piece.

I was using silk, single strand for the ghostly face. I think it would have worked if I had been planning on only doing the vague shape of a head, but even looking at it closely in person, you can barely tell the difference between the yellow hair and the flesh coloured skin. I can kind of see where the nose and mouth are, but the eye is completely lost.

I think I'm going to try it again with thicker thread for the face (or doubling-quadrupling the thread).

The various black threads for the raven look really good though. Better in person, the flash exaggerates the differences.

Sing Your Dead to Sleep

“Sing Your Dead To Sleep”
2008
Tapestry (pulled warp) - wool, linen, beads
18 cm x 12 cm x 10 1/2 cm

The War Queen III

are we lost
and widow-damned
...sing the dead to sleep
who no more raise the sun among us
who no more lay the stars to rest

Brenda Gerritsma, 2003


“Sing Your Dead to Sleep” is one of a collection of roughly figural pieces I am working on; a kind of fetish doll, meant to house a strong emotional concept, rather than to impose energy. This piece is one of mourning an overwhelming loss, portraying a personal ritual of farewell.


Linen warp, wool weft. One of my few pieces not made predominantly with recycled/reclaimed/secondhand materials, the linen and wool were purchased, though for another project. The beads are woven in, the white discs coming from an old necklace no one wanted, and the seed beads were also purchased for another project. The green branching plant was embroidered on after shaping, with long and short bullion stitches.

The body was woven with large slits, with the weft on either side being pulled deliberately too tight to cause the slits to gape. It was also woven with curling patterns in the warp, which are really only visible when seeing it closely in person (you can see it a little between the head and the stitching and beads on the first picture).

I Will Give you Only Winter

“I Will Give you Only Winter”
2008
Tapestry - various fibre (recycled), beads
15 cm x 11 cm

I walk in a shadow wood
where you will not find me
I turn to shadow
to pass there within
do not love me
for I will give you only winter
to turn your tears to ice

Brenda Gerritsma, 2006



This piece is almost entirely recycled, including the warp. I think the white silk in the face and the cream silk used for the lips were the only thing threads I purchased new. Crochet cotton, rayon embroidery floss, cotton twine (same as warp), multi-strand silver (flat strands twined with thread) were used for the background, and the small iridescent beads were woven in on white sewing thread. The body was done with white and black silk floss, cream silk embroidery thread, thrums of unknown fibre and off-white cotton floss. The hair is boucle of unknown fibre, with pearl seed beads woven in. The pearls were definitely second hand. I can't remember if I bought the iridescent beads or not. I've have them lying around a long time.

The warp was some kind of cotton twine-like thread I had lying around. Bad for warp, I lost two warp strands and a couple looked in danger of fraying apart when I had to stop because I was getting too close to the top of the loom a touch shy of the original design. I think I may just stick to linen warp in the future for anything over a couple inches wide. It's the only thing I haven't had grief with.

It was originally supposed to be 15 cm x 15 cm, but after a slight design change in the hair, I think it actually looks better this way. It would have been nice to get the entire piece in stark white and silver, but even the white silk isn't truly white, and all of my linen, silk and wool threads are actually off-white through cream coloured. Looked very 70's.

Also, this piece sucked to weave. I think I took out at least 90% of it at least once, as one thing after another just didn't work right.

Unusual wefts

A few days ago, I asked the Tapestry list I'm on what unusual wefts they've tried. I thought I should post the ones I've tried.






1/ Cotton chenille: nice to work with, nice furry visual, kept together perfectly. I really want to try silk chenille.





2/ Metal thread: don't know what kind, ok to work with. The metal strip seems to be twined with thin filaments of some sort, then plied. Nice, because you can be a bit rougher beating it in than I would be with metal wrapped around a silk or rayon core.


3/ Rayon chenille: it was multicoloured and came out a nice speckly furry look, but either it didn't pack down well, or the core thread is showing because I have 'lice'. Lots of tufts pulled out. Could be a function of rayon chenille in general, or of this brand in particular.



4/ Moda Dea 'Dream': scraps from another project, long tufts sticking out all over.






5/ Handspun: (by someone clearing not practiced at it-possibly me!), wouldn't pack down at all, though it would probably be fine if it were evenly done.




6/ Boucle:weaves well, would make a great tapestry sheep!





7/ Mohair: weaves well, very 'hairy' looking







8/ I don't even know what this is: looks like a strand of unspun/soft-spun cotton that alternates between thick and thin, and it's stitched into a squiggle with a couple of fine strands of thread (in this case, popcorn-butter yellow -the class referred to it as the "popcorn yarn" which it does look like when woven.

9/Long eyelash yarn. A nuisance to weave, as you have to pull the tufts out as you weave if you want them loose, but it packs down well. Tufts are kind of long though. Not sure what it would be useful for.




10/ Beldings Artsyl for Crochet and Knitting. Apparently vintage thread. I'm having trouble finding out much about it. The Company was well known for silk production, and was founded some time in the later 19th century. They had mills in various locations in the US and in Montreal Canada (which is where this thread was apparently made). I can't find any info on this particular thread itself, though. "Artsyl" suggests artificial silk to me. Feels like it as well.

I HATE this thread with a burning passion. A few of the spools still had their paper strips on, but any one that the strip is off, the thread practically springs off the spool, like wire. Doesn't help that I only have it in pastel pink, pastel green and pastel purple. Bleh. Beats down without any fuzziness, with almost creepy perfection.

11/ Metallic plastic strip from a child's cheerleading pom-pom. Lots of lice. Can only be beaten down in a closed shed (it just springs back up if you beat it in the natural shed).



12/ Short eyelash yarn. I like this one a lot. Looks like funfur.






13/ Very odd yarn. A thick strand of unspun fibres (feels like acrylic), with a thin strand of tightly spun (single) of same, wrapped with a very fine strand, that spirals around the other two. My camera died before I could get a good picture, but some ares look like slightly fuzzy regular tapestry weaving, with scattered areas of fluffiness. Kind of like clouds, if clouds were woven. :)