Making Clothes

Tessellated Sphere II, starting over

The second sphere cover design was getting so busy it was stressful to look at.  I started over completely, and it's slow going.  The new polar region:

 

The seams are not yet couched;  I'll do that after the whole sphere is finished and I can tell what color (probably black and/or charcoal grey) will be best.  You may be able to detect the influence of my trip to the Met this past Christmas;  I spent all my time in the new Art of the Arab Lands Gallery.

I have begun a provisional utility patent application for my tessellated ball cover technique, design, etc.

ATTN: introverts like me

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html

I just cut all the white and blue and orange pieces out of the Sphere II cover.

Sphere II in progress

It's about half finished, and it's very disappointing.  In looking at it, I have to remind myself that the seams will be couched and the finished piece will be stretched taut on the ball.  It's loose and unfinished looking right now.

Having used most of my more colorful material in Sphere I, I am faced with a rather drab lot as I work on #2.  Thinking I can compensate for the lack of excitement, I'm trying to drum up some interesting patterns, and after my visit to the magnificent New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, etc etc. this past December, I found myself attempting---without much success---designs like the cartouches seen on inlaid panels and metalwork there.  This means I'm attempting to use my technique with smaller, curvier, and pointier shapes, and it's creating problems.

Once the piece is taut, many of the apparent imperfections will be smoothed, but it's been difficult to keep the all the curves and points regular from place to place.  Even though the pieces are felted and interfaced, they still have a lot of give.  (Maybe I need something stiffer than ShapeFlex.)  This give in the pieces (aka "fudge factor") really works to my advantage at times, but occasionally it gets out of hand.  I also find the piece as a whole to be on the "busy" side for my eye, and disconnected--in a bad way.  For example, I think I wish that orange were at the top---or gone completely;  I would like to get rid of the blue and white triangles, but I question whether it would be worth my time.  

It's possible to make these changes, but it will prolong this exercise, which I have decided to consider a test piece to see how much detail I can reasonably achieve with ShapeFlex interfaced sweaters as the starting material.   I'm thinking that, even with more tinkering, I may have already gleaned all I can from this project, that with all its limitations I don't really find joy in working it any more, and that maybe I should put it into hibernation and get started on the next thing.  Once it's off the ball, it doesn't take up much room at all.  

The ball is finally finished...

...zipper and all.

 

 

Big Sphere, wool felt tessellation, continued...

This is a quick update re the felt patchwork tesselation of the 66 cm diameter sphere. You see hereunder a photo of the second hemisphere immediately after assembly.  Since the photo was taken I have couched all seams with 2 or 3 strands of black yarn, depending on the location, using the bulky overlock foot and feather stitch on my Bernina.

Patchwork felt sample

For a larger project, I'm working to develop the best technique for creating patchwork fabric from felted swatches and recycled sweater material.  Durability is required.  Here is my first sample:

You might recognize Noro Iro and Kureyon;  the purple is a thrift shop sweater and the "candy corn" is an unidentified swatch.    After felting, I cut the pieces and steam pressed with vigor.  I pieced them with the 3-part zig zag stitch (3 on Bernina machine), and then applied fusible interfacing to the entire back of the piece.  I would love to be able to do a butted seam on the serger with this stuff, but it's just too thick, and some of it is not dense enough---although with enough interfacing it might not matter.

Because my intermediate-term goal involves tesselating a sphere with patchwork of this type, I imagine I will have to interface both each individual patch AND the backs of the seams.  The tentative plan is to use the calculation tools and assembly instructions for the panelised construction of a dome building to achieve the tesselation of the sphere.   In fact, I have begun this part of the project and I am in the middle of cutting individual pieces of fusible interfacing for the trapezoids.

Here's a detail of the stitching:

Devise your own trellises: super cheap and shabby chic

When you need multiple trellises, it can be expensive.  Faced with a tiny back garden and a yen to grow everything, I'm forced to get into climbing plants as never before.  I wanted to create climbing supports without spending a fortune.  

My first idea:

I bought those tacky little white wire fences made to be used as borders, spread two of them out on the ground, clipped them to size, twisted together the pieces on each fence that would ordinarily go into the ground, hung it up on the wooden fence, and voilà:

This is White Flower Farm's Clematis "Avant Garde".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next idea:  Last year I paid $125 at B.B. Barns in Asheville for a rusty metal trellis about 5 feet high and 3 feet wide.  Later in the season I was browsing through the building materials section at Home Depot and noticed some stuff I later learned was called "wire concrete mesh".   It's used inside concrete for stabilization or something like that.  A piece measuring 8 feet by 4 feet costs $7.25.  You won't like it if you don't like rustiness!  I hung a few up on the fence and I bent one into a gentle "V" shape and inverted it in a garden bed.  I'll post again once plants start growing up these things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This thing was devilishly difficult to photograph, especially on auto focus. 

The Glass Deadline

From Ira Glass:

"I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

"A lot of people never get out of this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

"Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. You just gotta fight your way through."

I don't look like I'm doing anything, most of the time.  I knit and sew and felt--and do strange things with wires from time to time.  But I have ideas for one-of-a-kind pieces, large pieces which I imagine in gallery settings, things which I'm not even sure I can make, but in fact, those are the things I have the most interest in making.

So, I'm going to set a Glass deadline for myself.  I can't make any of these ideas fully concrete in a week, but I can finish a kind of "study" piece for one of them.  Not sure what would be best, and feasible.