New, old, ancient

 New pillow made from vintage fabrics (1920's- 2013) which include a 1930's blue cotton flour sack,  1950-60's gray floral-print cotton (my grandmother's curtains),   green woven 1960's cotton (our den curtains growing up),  1980's plaid wool (my sister's pants), and newly bought yellow burlap and digital print silk from my scarf .

Color

 
                                                I think the oldest fabric in the group is this red woven wool which was in a box with some other upholstery scraps and a receipt dated September 1926. The color and weave brought to mind ancient South American textiles....

                                                                                                 ......like the one I sketched when I visited the "Wari: Lords of the Andes" exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum in Aug 2013.

Referencing the photo in the exhibition catalog, I pulled together the other fabrics to complete the color palette.

Composition

the main idea was to showcase the pattern and weave of the red wool. 

thinking of a color-blocked composition like  Hans Hofmann 's painting "Elysium" 

Texture

The blue wool plaid reminded me of  Japanese boro textiles  , like this jacket

and since I wanted to use up some scraps that were already in strips, I sewed them, along with other darker cotton scraps onto an old bed sheet.   

 Then I cut that textile into strips...

and sewed those strips in layers to make a textile.  The white sheet pops through in places and accentuates lines and texture.

the scrap of digital print silk was added just before I sewed the pillow together.

Pattern

Here, the right and wrong side of the curtain fabric are sewn together to make a new pattern. The matrix of raised, stitched lines is the result of sewing with a double needle.  The curtain fabric is old and tears easily in places; sewing it onto a lining not only reinforces it, but creates another texture, a map-like effect, which I really like.




Label

The handwritten label sewn onto the pillow back is made of the cotton lining of our 1960's den curtains.

Rotations

Rock pillow and beyond

Rock pillow  made with recycled fabrics--
green woven cotton 1960's curtain, light blue  1960's cotton canvas shower curtain.  Other fabrics include tea-dyed burlap, Italian linen, and silk.
The yellow burlap and orange silk  edge strips  are trimmed from the Istanbul textile

trimming the pillow front:

and playing with the edgestrips
-- the leftovers from one project generate ideas for the next:

rotations

post-note 

Usually Tillycat joins my photo-shoots, but today she took refuge from the cold wind in a plant container.

From the kitchen to Istanbul--scraps of fabrics, scraps of ideas PLUS Daniel Gordon and Mickalene Thomas

This is a textile I made from my pile of small scraps --silk, old curtains, wool, velvet, corduroy, old bedspread-- all sewed onto a piece of tea-dyed burlap,

 ...which I then cut into pieces and arranged on yellow burlap-- I like the slashy effect.
The process is self generative: arranging/ attaching/ cutting,  then rearranging/ attaching/ cutting.  It could go on and on, yielding infinite itererations.  Nothing is predetermined, I have no idea of the outcome when I begin.

Here are the same pieces on black wool, looking something like an intersection in a city plan. I could sew them on in this configuration, then cut that textile into pieces which would make yet another new textile. It'a an endless path.




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... looking around this week at artists' work that focuses on color, shape and patterns, like the still lifes of  Daniel Gordon

and the landscapes of  Mickalene Thomas  

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a photo my niece took in Istanbul this summer....

from which I put together this preliminary"sketch" using cutouts from the screen in her picture. The blue patterned cotton is from India,

one of a set of swatches brought to a friend by her husband who was travelling there in the 1980's.

This project is a new experience for me in that it's "about" something-- a collection of friends' and family relationships and experiences; a husband thinking of his wife when he's away from home, a young person traveling alone for the first time. It's about how we capture memories of our experiences with images and objects.  It's inclusive.

And in contrast to the burlap strips, it's an intentional process, at least partially predetermined from the outset.  I wanted to make something personal for my niece as a college graduation gift, something that includes a piece of her life,  so I suggested using one of her photos to make a textile. Graphically I like what I'm seeing in the mock-up, but am not that excited about cutting pieces from a template.
I wonder about the literalness of this particular interpretation and how comfortable I am with that.

It is however, a gift, and since my niece really likes the mock-up, and I like the photo and that it captures her vision,  I'll continue to work with it and see what happens.  I'm very curious to see what comes out.

A last note about this process-- judging by how much I've just written, there seem to be a lot of words attached to it.  I'm getting tired of words, just wanting to focus more on making things rather than meaning, to pursue the not-quite  ineffable ,  because that's too grand a word.



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made with random scraps: 1950-60's pink cotton chrysanthemum fabric from my grandmother Catherine,  brown basket-weave 1950's upholstery fabric, various 1980's woven gray cottons (my sister's pants scraps). The leopard is a 1990's upholstery scrap from a friend's office/library.  Other fabrics include upholstery samples, wool and silk.

New work, thinking of Howard Hogkin

Just finished this pillow made of assorted fabric, old and new, including a blue canvas 1960's shower curtain and digital print silk leftover from my scarf .  -(click to enlarge)

The burlap strip-construction reminds me of the hay bales in the pastures around here; looking at this photo I realize how much beige and black are part of my visual world.

... also thinking of Howard Hodgkin 's

"frame" paintings in which the painting is both inside of the frame and is the frame at the same time.

rotations:

Unlike a painting hung on the wall, you can turn a pillow and look at in different directions...

...and along can come a cat to sharpen her claws (but she didn't frighten the photographer away).

The black center is cut from strips sewn onto an old sheet.  While I was making it,  I was thinking that it's kind of like I'm making my own pigments, but with fabric instead of paint.

I liked it so much that I made a couple of more blocks with different fabrics, thinking of construction-- stone walls, bricks, or the wood siding I see around here every day

This one is made with green woven cotton 1960's curtains-- exposed seams and all-- that hung in our den when I was growing up.  

This is a current photo, courtesy of Google maps, of the house in New Iberia, Lousiana where we lived when I was little.  It looks exactly as I remember it from the mid-1960's.  What strikes me is how green it is, tropical bayou climate and all... 

Other new works....

This pillow was made as a birthday gift for a friend of mine-- tea-dyed burlap, my old 1920-30's tea-dyed cotton bedspread that I replaced last summer , and a classic (possibly Larsen??) textile in the center. It was mailed last week from here in central Texas to my friend in Florida, but somehow ended up making a detour to Anchorage, as in Alaska??, courtesy of USPS.  Hope the baked goods I sent with it survived the adventure.

This one is made of edge-strips-- some trimmed off the bird's nest pillow
Leftovers of leftovers-- a self-generative process.

When I added the block of yellow, I was thinking of grounds of color, specifically the classic Getz/Gilberto album covers with the artwork of Olga Albizu

....a big hit with  Tillycat