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Archive: Fiber Art
November 12, 2009
Felted Wool Dryer Balls
Recently I heard that felted wool balls are great alternative to dryer sheets. Apparently they reduce your drying time, soften your laundry, and eliminate static cling. There are places like Stoney Mountain Farm who sell handmade wool balls made from the wool grown on their farm. But for folks who want to try their hand at making their own, there are some good tutorials online. Diane Gilleland recently posted pictures of ones she made using a tutorial by Judy Coates Perez. Both ladies offer great advice and pretty pictures, like the one above by Judy. I suppose for the dryer, I would use natural, undyed wool. Can't wait to try this and see how well it works.
Posted by Goli Mohammadi |
Nov 12, 2009 05:00 PM
Fiber Art |
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Get Cozy with Vaska Contest
Berkeley-based Vaska, makers of botanical-based laundry soap, is holding a Get Cozy With Vaska Contest, which sounds like it's right up our alley.
Twelve winners will get $300 in cash and a page in the 2010 Vaska Cozy Calendar, sure to be a collector's item (or so they claim). The contest ends at midnight Jan. 4, 2010, with winners announced on Jan. 10. So now's the time to get making cozies! The cash would be a nice help in paying off some of my holiday debt, is what I'm thinking.
And I appreciate the fact that their PR efforts are focusing on crafters and our mad crafting skills:
"The Get Cozy Contest is a way of introducing the crafts community to laundry care products that conserve the integrity of their designs and, at the same time, we can reward them for their creativity. We know crafters will appreciate Vaska's softer, brighter, greener results," says Julia Fry, Vaska creator. Fry is a former fashion designer, whose love of textiles led her to create the herb-based detergent.
All the details, contest rules, and info on where to buy Vaska detergent can be found on their website.
Posted by Shawn Connally |
Nov 12, 2009 11:00 AM
Announcements, Contests, Fiber Art, Green, Homemade, Refashion, Yarn |
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November 9, 2009
Maurizio Anzeri's Photo Embroidery
Artist Maurizio Anzeri creates these wild portraits with found photos and thread. [via Teagan Tall]
Posted by Becky Stern |
Nov 9, 2009 07:00 AM
Arts & Design, Fiber Art |
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November 5, 2009
Screen-printed Bags for the Memories
My grandmother never threw anything away, and kept all of her possessions in pristine order. As a child, this was a little hard to deal with -- don't sit on the bedspread, no shoes on the couch, fold the towel after you dry your hands -- but as an adult I've come to appreciate her fastidious care of her items, some of which I now possess and thoroughly enjoy.
This WWII Army Housewife bag is one of my favorite hand-me-downs. Apparently, it included a sewing kit back when it was issued, and these kits were issued by the Brits and the Swiss as well. Nowadays, this little Army Housewife bag holds my jewelry on overnight trips. And it makes me smile every time I look at it.
When I started to think about making gifts for my family, I decided that I wanted to try and capture that same smile-inducing nostalgia for my relatives. Since we've got a few silkscreen-type machines in the office, I thought I'd beg one friend to make me a design and another friend to show me how to use the Yudu machine (I've used the Gocco printer before, but wanted to try a new device).
I'm loving the results! So much that I've now screen-printed about 12 bags and 8 dish towels, and am wondering if I can get away with giving nothing but self-branded textiles for all my gifts. (And thanks to Daniel and Brookelynn for helping me out, not to mention everyone else who helped with the manual labor in the name of learning!)
Posted by Shawn Connally |
Nov 5, 2009 11:00 AM
Design, Fabric, Fiber Art |
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October 29, 2009
Tanis Alexis' Urban Felt Rug
This is a lovely detail from a felted rug, handmade by Tanis Alexis. Tanis is a fiber artist, mom, contributor to Feltique, and a spectacular artist. She creates classic pieces of felt, but with a multimedia twist! Each rug is wet felted from 100% wool, and then the city scene is added with a limited edition cut stencil. Tanis will make this piece custom, in about 3-6 weeks.
Posted by Brookelynn |
Oct 29, 2009 02:00 PM
Felting, Fiber Art, Home Decor |
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October 26, 2009
Heart Embroidery
Andrea Dezso is an artist in a wide variety of media (animation, sculpture, book design, fibers), and while her heart embroidery from 2004 isn't new, it is certainly impressive.
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Posted by Becky Stern |
Oct 26, 2009 09:00 AM
Arts & Design, Fiber Art, Hand Embroidery |
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October 22, 2009
Colorbomb Fibers
At Maker Faire 2009 I had the pleasure of meeting Velma of COLORBOMB Creations. Velma is a colorful explosion of enthusiasm and fiber arts. She has a great etsy shop with amazing offerings, and yesterday on her blog VelmasWorld, she announced a new product, called SmorgasBombs. They will be launched at SOAR, the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat happening in Oregon next week. Not fair, cause I want to buy one right now!!!
Packaged in plastic bags re-claimed from the Sock Summit dumpster, each SmorgasBOMB contains 4 ounces/115 grams of animal fiber. This batch may contain any/all of the following breeds: Babydoll Southdown, Cheviot, Coopworth, Cormo, Corriedale, Cotswold, CVM, Dorset, Lincoln, Merino, Mohair, Rambouillet, Romney, Targhee, Wensleydale.
Posted by Brookelynn |
Oct 22, 2009 02:00 PM
Felting, Fiber Art |
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Janet Echelman's Her Secret is Patience
Janet Echelman is a public artist who makes large-scale fiber works. This one, called Her Secret is Patience, is in Phoenix, Arizona, and is made from painted galvanized steel and recyclable high-tenacity polyester braided twine netting. Janet is featured in the latest issue of Fiber Arts Magazine.
Posted by Becky Stern |
Oct 22, 2009 09:05 AM
Arts & Design, Fiber Art |
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October 18, 2009
Sadie Fox's Wicked Scarf
Rachel spotted a beautiful version of the Ruffle Scarf inspiration I shared for the Me, My Scarf, and I Singer Sewing Challenge. It was created by Sadie Fox, who has the scarf up on her own blog, and posted on Wardrobe ReFashion. Her site has a ton of fun fashion projects with clever recycled and repurposed twists. I love the color she chose for her scarf, it just looks so great on her, and I hope she had a great time wearing it to the musical Wicked! I also hope that you will enter the contest, for a chance to win a Singer Serger.
Posted by Brookelynn |
Oct 18, 2009 06:00 PM
Contests, Fashion, Fiber Art |
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October 17, 2009
Stunning Needle Felted Dragon
This needle felted dragon is awfully life-like for being a mythical beast! The work is quite impressive! From the artist, tallydragon, on deviantart.com:
He is made out of natural wools from the Iron Horse Farm, a local fiber farm, and the Flying Ewe, a fiber arts website. He has a wire understructure through most of his body that makes his wings, legs, and tail moderately poseable--the tail is extra long so that it can curl around the finger its sitting on. He's got glass eyes held in by glue and wires, and his horns are made out of wire covered in apoxie sculpt, topped with acrylic paint and matte varnish.
[Thanks, Eric Russell!]
Posted by Brookelynn |
Oct 17, 2009 06:00 PM
Felting, Fiber Art, Needle Felting |
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October 12, 2009
How-To: Yarn Scrap Embroidery
Fall is in the air, and I'm feeling a need to embroider. If you're like me, you have an enormous pile of yarn left over from other projects. In my case, it sits in my needlework bag and taunts me, daring me to dig into it and make something pretty. So, one early fall afternoon with Vivaldi's Autumn Allegro playing on iTunes, I took the challenge. Using one of the butcher linen placemats from my Felix Populi product line, I set about laying down some fall foliage in yarn.
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Posted by Shawn Connally |
Oct 12, 2009 12:00 PM
CRAFT Projects, Fiber Art, Hand Embroidery, Sewing, Yarn |
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October 7, 2009
Chillingworth the Owl
I'm in love with this stoic, macabre plush owl by Ann Wood. [Thanks, Sean!]
Posted by Becky Stern |
Oct 7, 2009 04:00 PM
Fiber Art |
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October 5, 2009
Breakbeats Sampler
Artist Andrew Salomone writes:
It occurred to me that needleworkers used to have to make patterns and images to decorate fabric in the same way that contemporary music producers make beats and musical compositions by repeating and layering audio samples in digital sound editing programs. So the files created using digital editing programs today basically function in the same way that needlework samplers did in the days when all embroidery had to be done by hand.
So he made this Breakbeats Sampler, featuring waveforms for some common breakbeats, lovingly stitched on fabric. I'm guessing the natural next step would be to make each breakbeat playable with a soft switch.
Posted by Becky Stern |
Oct 5, 2009 07:00 AM
Arts & Design, Fiber Art, Hand Embroidery |
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September 25, 2009
Open Source Embroidery in San Francisco
I'm proud to announce the opening of Open Source Embroidery, an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art on October 2. It's a great show with lots of crafts intersecting technology, including my LilyPad Embroidery piece. The show has traveled all the way from Sweden and looks truly fabulous. You can check out pictures of what the exhibition looked like at the Bildmuseet in Umeå, or stop by in person when the show opens in SF; I highly recommend it!
October 2, 2009 through January 24, 2010
Museum of Craft and Folk Art
51 Yerba Buena Lane
San Francisco, CA 94103
(@ Mission between Third & Fourth)
More:
Posted by Becky Stern |
Sep 25, 2009 07:00 AM
Arts & Design, Events, Fiber Art, Technology |
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September 24, 2009
Spider Silk Weaving
Talk about extreme craft! This gorgeous textile is an 11-foot-long weaving made from spider silk, specifically the golden orb spider of Madagascar. The story of how it was made is fascinating and well worth reading (a few tidbits: the saffron color is the undyed color of the spider silk, the threads have five times the strength of steel by weight, and it took more than one million spiders to make the cloth). The weaving will be on display in the American Museum of Natural History for the next six months, so if you're on the east coast, you should go look! Check out the New York Times article for more details on the history of humans using spider silk and how this particular piece was made. It's an amazing account that lives at the intersection of tradition and technology, science and art, craft and craziness.
Posted by Arwen O'Reilly Griffith |
Sep 24, 2009 05:00 PM
Fabric, Fiber Art, Technology |
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September 21, 2009
Works by Anu Tuominen
Over at Teagan Tall, Katie Wilson writes:
It is a compliment to say I mistook Finish artist Anu Tuominen's outdoor clothespin installation for a domestic-bent Andy Goldsworthy. Her meticulous organization of color and object are reminiscent too of any number of arrange-by-color artists, and yet Tuominen gently declines comparison.
Posted by Becky Stern |
Sep 21, 2009 07:00 AM
Arts & Design, Fiber Art |
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September 20, 2009
Herb Garden Handspun Yarn on Etsy
This week I am loving the special way that lavender and green play off each other. Such a dynamic color pairing. Herb Garden yarn from Beck and Call Girl on Etsy has just the right dusky light purples mixed with just the right greens.
Posted by Brookelynn |
Sep 20, 2009 06:00 PM
Cozy Up to Yarn, Fiber Art, Yarn |
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September 19, 2009
Meet Mathieu of Manspun
World Wide Spin In Public Day is happening right now. The community of spinners is a "tight knit" group, and together they've set out to share their love of fiber. I was introduced to the event by Manspun, and today I am going to introduce Manspun to you.
Manspun Yarns are the creation of Mathieu. Imagine a lumberjack who chops trees into endless yards of yarn! Imagine a weightlifter who can bench press 1 million skeins! Imagine a man from Canada who sells his own hand spun and hand dyed yarns, is active on ravelery, and spent today spinning in public! That Canadian man is Mathieu.
I'm going to let you hear more about him, from him, in his own very manly all lowercase voice:
i'm a man. i spin yarn. i knit.i also breath and eat and drink and play guitar and video games. many people are confused when they think of "man" and "yarn" in the same sentence, but they do in fact go together.
i'm relatively new to the world of yarn, spinning and knitting. i've known for a few years the basics of how to do things, but got really hardcore into things about a year and a half ago during a weekend spin-along in the Novelty and Art Yarns group on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/groups/novelty-and-art-yarn-spinners).
i'd probably have to say that i mostly prefer assembling (the manly word for spinning) Merino Wool and Bamboo into my manly yarns, and although many sheep have to live colder lives and many pandas go hungry, they know it's for the good of mankind. i use a Majacraft Little Gem for yarn assemblage, but because "Little Gem" sounds kind of wimpy, i refer to it instead as "Little Bastard"
If you feel like you can handle the testosterone- Find him on Ravelry. Find him on Flickr. Buy his yarn at his online store. Read his blog.
Posted by Brookelynn |
Sep 19, 2009 06:00 PM
Cozy Up to Yarn, Fiber Art, Yarn |
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September 18, 2009
Two Guyz Spinning and Spin in Public Day
Saturday is World Wide Spin in Public Day! That's tomorrow, so grab your spindles and find a Spin in Public event to visit. If you already know how to spin, get out there and try to teach someone who has never tried it. If you don't know, it's the perfect excuse to learn. Oh, and many thanks to Manspun for sending us the info on the event. Little did he know that I have a special place in my heart for men who spin! I'll be profiling him tomorrow, so check back for that!
In honor of WWSIP Day, I want to introduce you to two of my friends, Buck and Greg. They are obsessed with spinning. For them, every single day is Spin in Public Day! They run a roadside fiber stand in Monte Rio, a little hamlet on the Russian River in Sonoma County, California. Their shop is called Two Guyz Spinning, and Tuesday through Sunday, the "Two Guyz" set up their wares and set up their wheel, and then they spin.
What I love the most about them is their unconventional take on fiber arts. Buck and Greg are dedicated to living from the earth, and that includes their yarn-making techniques. Their unique take starts with the fibers that they spin. They spin sheep's wools like dorset and churro. They spin other animal fibers like alpaca and Kashmir goat. And they spin plant fibers like flax, bamboo, and hemp. The yarn Greg is showing off in the photo is some of his wolf yarn, and its just to die for. Buck and Greg take it to the next level when they spin fibers like wolf and wildcrafted bison. Collecting bison is tricky, because conservation laws prevent taking wool from any of the national parks like Yellowstone, where the herds live. Instead, the gatherers wait for the bison to leave the boundaries of the park to calve, and then take the fibers that are left behind.
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Posted by Brookelynn |
Sep 18, 2009 01:00 PM
Crochet, Fiber Art, Yarn |
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Intern's Corner: The Hunt for Pineapple Yarn
Every other week, CRAFT's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Craft: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.
By Lindsey North, projects intern
As readers of CRAFT and MAKE know, finding materials for projects can sometimes be challenging, if not downright maddening. I've spent hours online looking for very specialized materials that appear to be as mythical as unicorns. And even when you know exactly what you're after, you have to surf the web looking for the best deals.
To make CRAFT's Crocheted Wooden Bowl project by Vickie Howell, I remember hunting for yarn made from pineapple fibers that would be used to crochet around the wooden bowl to add decoration and color.
Pineapple fiber yarn! Come on! Where do you find that?
I searched online and learned that pineapple fiber is commonly called pina or piña. I called every yarn store in Sonoma County and then started calling the bigger stores in San Francisco. I couldn't find what I wanted.
So I did a general search and found Knit Purl, a store in Portland, Oregon, that carried the whole line of alternate-fiber yarns. These were made from various barks and leaves, and dyed with amazing colors; the saturation and hue reminded me of a florist's shop. And they had pineapple yarn! Theirs is called fique (fee-kay) and is made from a relative of the commercial pineapple plant. The store owners were very helpful, as they allowed me to pay over the phone and shipped the yarn to me. Knit Purl is the place to go for strange and awesome yarns. At this point in my crafting career that has been my greatest acquisitional challenge.
I had a blast working on this project after I found the yarn and some wooden bowls that didn't "cost an arm and a leg." (I would have a hard time spending big bucks on something I'm just going to drill holes in.) Returning to the Craft Lab, I measured and marked the points where I would be drilling my wooden bowls. (Measuring is very important and should never be skipped ever if you are a trained professional.)
Then I crocheted my way around the bowl, slowly decreasing as I got closer to the base. I ended the last ring around the base, and wove the end back in. This bowl looks totally awesome when it is full of fruit -- or balls of hard-to-find yarn.
Your CRAFT intern,
Lindsey
Posted by Keith Hammond |
Sep 18, 2009 10:03 AM
Crochet, Fiber Art, Home Decor, Intern's Corner |
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