Tom Lundberg, embroidery artist, to lecture at University of Louisville

 

One of the earliest and most influential artists on my development of female merit badges, Tom Lundberg has an outstanding career as an embroidery artist. When I was living in Colorado, I had the opportunity to meet him and was honored to have him visit my studio on several occasions. He has taught several generations of artists at Colorado State University, Fort Collins and has lectured and exhibited all over the world. He’s also very warm, funny and easy to talk to!

For more information on the lecture and exhibit in Louisville, KY:

http://louisville.edu/art/calendar/tom-lundberg-microcosms.ics

Info about a workshop in Puglia, Italy:

http://www.masseriadellazingara.com/pages/James%20Hunting%20&%20Tom%20Lundberg.html

McCalls pattern for stuffed animals from 1936

Probably in the mid-70’s, when I was sewing many of my own clothes, I bought some vintage patterns, including this 1936 McCall’s pattern for stuffed animals:

McCalls printed pattern for stuffed animals, 1936

In all these years I never opened or examined this pattern, but I wanted to make some stuffed animals and thought these would work for my purposes. Upon opening the packet, I discovered that one piece had been carefully pinned to a pretty calico fabric, which is still crisp and colorful:

It gave me a little thrill, to connect with this hand from the past, but there is only one piece cut out, the “Under Body” of a giraffe. What happened? No other tissue pieces have been cut into, and no other fabric is in the envelope. It would be too early for a frustrated sewer to give up; there are no fabric scraps and not a single other tissue piece assembled. There is just one piece was folded up and tucked back away into the pattern envelope, that’s it.

pattern pinned to fabric

Stuffed animal, interrupted.

Mama Merit Badges

Mama merit badges: cute. What a great idea, I wish I’d thought of it.

Breastfeeding Female Merit Badge by Mary Yaeger

Actually, about a year ago I tried out commercially producing some other types of badges for moms and kids, like

A New Pea in the Pod! by Mary Yaeger

A badge for celebrating a new child, that can be customized with name and birth date.

New Patch: Foursquare Merit Badge

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, 2008
crewel embroidery on linen
8″x17″

After discussing Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, I had the urge to create an embroidery about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I decided to borrow heavily (should I say mashup?) from the William Morris Woodpecker Tapestry and Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve.

I visited the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow in 2007 to study the colors in the Woodpecker Tapestry.

Please note: tapestry, a weaving technique, should not be confused with embroidery or needlepoint, also known as canvaswork. There are a lot of needlepoint kits that reproduce William Morris designs, but few people have the skill and patience to learn tapestry weaving. I’m a big fan of tapestry weaving but not a practitioner.

To help you sort out the different textile techniques, this link may come in handy.

I’m Ecstatic about Zazzle Stitch Player

I’ve been wanting to animate stitches. I know there are several animated embroideries out there, but I’m ecstatic to find Zazzle’s Stitch Player. It had to be digitized to look this cool. Try stitching out the vampire crest.

Open Source Embroidery at mocfa.org

Unfortunately I missed and probably would have anyway, but allow me to regret that Open Source Embroidery closed a few days ago at The Museum of Folk Art & Craft in San Francisco. Fortunately, not only do museums keep online archives, but they are now producing marvelous videos that help alleviate one’s disappointment.

This show was of particular interest to me because of Leah Buechley’s e-textile work, which includes the goal of promoting math and science education. I first learned of LB through an article in Volume 1 of Craft: that first appeared in 2006. I was living in Boulder, CO at the time, and was thrilled to discover that LB was in the CS doctoral program at the U of CO. I decided to track her down. I had worked in the women in engineering program (2001-2004; now BOLD) and environmental engineering (2004-2006), so I knew about the Discovery Learning Center and what an accessible place it is.

Leah was interested in meeting local weavers and textile artists and teaching them the basics of creating LED patterns on wearables. The Handweavers Guild of Boulder hosted a presentation and there was a great deal of interest from the group. Unfortunately the date/time didn’t come together for a workshop and Leah went on to an assistant professorship at MIT’s Media Lab. Before she left I did take the time to visit Leah at the Craft Technology Lab at CU and practice soldering a few of the LED “sequins” together so that I could try a few designs on my own. I’m sorry to say my experiments are still packed away at the moment.

A little later, Becky Stern published her  LilyPad Arduino embroidery on craftzine; her piece, “A Tribute to Leah Buechley” appeared in the Open Source Embroidery show. There are a number of places to visit if you would like to try the tech-nique/nology yourself:

straight to the source: http://web.media.mit.edu/~leah/grad_work/diy/diy_tank.html

a simpler project, with step-by-step video: http://sternlab.org/2009/11/ledsewing/

For lots more inspiration, visit the high low tech projects at MIT: http://hlt.media.mit.edu/projects.html

Roanna Wells at Waterperry Gardens additional info

Roanna’s site, with photos (did we neglect to describe this elegant, minimalist, calligraphic and atmospheric work?)
Don’t ask me how it’s possible to be all of the above, just take a look:
http://www.roannawells.co.uk/roannawells.co.uk/solid%20air.html
At Waterperry:
http://www.artinaction.org.uk/event_demonstrator-details.asp?ref=13&artref=489

P1020027 Roanna Wells at Waterperry Gardens Art in Action

P1020027

Originally uploaded by Karnataka10

Rosanna Wells – Best of Best in Art in Action Show at Waterperry, Oxfordshire, UK July 2009 which Mary and Hoonie visited together. this girl has just finished her 3 year Art course at Manchester this summer and won Best of the Best.
A one to watch – we suppose!

[Hoonie & HP]

Petrapiece by Hoonie Feltham

Originally uploaded by Karnataka10

“This is a piece I made in 2007 and exhibited in an Art Show in Oxford, England that year.
It reflects my response to a visit to the World Heritage site of Petra in Jordan. Petra was built by the Nabbateans around 2000 years ago in a long, deep gorge in a mountain range. The buildings are shallow, mainly one room deep, carved into the sandstone rock face. People may remember the scene of an extraordinary building in Raiders of the Lost Arc. That is the main building facing you as you walk down the ‘siq’ (gorge).
2000 years has caused the sandstone to weather into highly colourful lines of pinks and purples which I have tried to replicate in my piece.
The embroidery of the weathered sandstone is placed between two pieces of dupion silk onto which I have machine embroidered the ziggurat shapes carved onto the faces of most of the buildings in Petra.
The piece sold from that exhibition.”

–Hoonie Feltham