Sherri Woodard Coffey

I’ve been thinking about weaving a face next on the Mirrix. Not a realistic face, but a bright, colorful one of bright not-natural colors. For the hair, I envision coils of yarn in several colors, somewhat Medusa-like. I’ve done coils before—I just don’t remember how I did them. Maybe if I can find the sample, I will figure it out. But about the face, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not sure about the fiddly small parts, things like eyes, mouth, etc. All necessary parts if you’re going to do a face! With faces in mind, I did a Google image search for faces. Well, folks, there’s lots of images of faces out there!There’s this one by Belinda Eaton.

Or maybe something with Photoshopped like the one below, except with brighter colors. The link for this one is here. 

And there are many Faces of Africa photos. The one below has its source listed as a caption.

This one came from National Geographic. I love the elegance of the women in these photos. And the hair is kind of what I’ve been talking about doing, but longer and more of it—and of many colors. And, I guess I could always adapt the pumpkin face idea.

And here’s my own computer creation. Maybe if I make the eyes bigger and only make a single slanted line for the nose, the fiddly parts will be simpler. In the meantime, look at this tapestry by Emöke-emöke. Go to her website, scroll over the pictures to see the texture in her work. Really very interesting and beautiful. And the coils—love them!

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Despite having a really hard couple of weeks with personal family tragedy, Amy has been working a little on her Mirrix project. I know from my experience with a death in the family, concentration goes out the window, so Amy is doing really well to be able to weave at all. If you look at the right picture in its larger format, you can see what she is doing with the beads. I really like the texture of the various yarns she is using and the way the beads outline the curve of the white on the upper left. And besides the “shiny” of the beads, Amy has used what looks like shiny, metallic yarns. In the left picture, you can see how she’s going about the process, the tray with her beads, etc.

Below is a picture of the blue yarn all tied up for ikat. Before I removed it from the board, I tied two labels of cut up Tyvek envelopes at bottom left and top right which say:

Board #2 Bottom left

Board #2 Top right

Ask me how I learned that this labeling is important! This is important, along with the twining to keep each peg section in order. My first attempts at ikat were chaotic to say the least. I am now working on the red sections.

Take a look at the pictures from the exhibit below. I’d be interested in which one you like best, if any. There are several that fascinate me, like the ones called Mane and Spice Skulls. Interesting concept and works.

Dead or Alive: Nature Becomes Art

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I’ve been thinking about the text and weaving. In looking at the soumak pseudo spiral above, this may be the best method of making text. Curves are much easier to obtain, and one might even get a cursive-type of writing. But I really wanted wider letters, so I tried the what’s shown below. Before deciding what to do next time, I will have to change the orientation of the letters before weaving. Then I will also probably try some blockier type of font, maybe something like this, without the little curlicues at the bottom of the t.

Text

Imagine working for seven years on the same project! Now I know that Matisse was working on other projects at the same time, but gee, don’t you just finally say enough already? In the NY Times, there is an article about how the paintings of Matisse evolved over time—not the usual study from one painting to the next, but the study of one painting and how it changed to the final product. Of course, this type of reflection that brings change to a project is not possible for most of us weavers. How many looms with unfinished projects do we have room for? However, I’m sure we’ve all looked back at a finished work and thought how we’d do something differently. Maybe that’s what leads to a series. But is it something we’d do differently, or just an advancement on the original idea?

Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society, New York

“Bathers by a River” went through a seven-year evolution as Henri Matisse continued to make changes, which can now be traced by curators using X-ray technology.

The following is a quote from the article about how this exhibit came about and the process of studying the various works.

The exhibition’s organizers, Mr. Elderfield and Stephanie d’Alessandro, the curator of modern art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the exhibit was first shown, focused on 26 paintings, drawings and sculptures, which they examined with new digital imaging techniques, laser scanning, ultraviolet illumination and up-to-date computer software. They also tested paint samples and studied fresh material unearthed from the artist’s family archives in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a Paris suburb.

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Real life brings allergies–I didn’t get as much done as I had planned. Real life has a way of interfering sometimes. Probably because of the almost daily rain of the past week, my allergies have really kicked in. I can just imaging the rampant mold floating around in the air, multiplying as we speak. This is July in Texas? However, here in this part of Texas, we hesitate to complain about rain, since we get desperate for it in the summer. And, I really do love rain—just don’t know what blew in with this latest front that has brought us moisture! I shouldn’t complain; I haven’t had any problems with allergies in years, but still … who wants to feel bad?

Real life event #2—the tread on my tires was getting pretty thin, and you know it HAD to be bad for me to even notice tires! When I last had the car serviced, they told me the tires could probably go until the next service, about 5,000 miles, but the tires worried me. In doing the price-checking/research, I discovered more about tires than was even imaginable. Speed ratings. Rolling resistance. Summer tires. Winter tires. All season tires. Who knew? Since I have a hybrid, some of these things are more important than others.

I am hoping that the allergies abate enough that I can take advantage of some of the special Members’ Month at the Kimbell. I especially want to go the the Omni Theater for the Van Gogh film. Sigh heavily, feeling sorry for myself…maybe tomorrow.

How disconcerting is this—the NYTimes article about spy exchange. Is this a John le Carré novel or what?

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The text that I am attempting to weave is similar to the above, but with thicker lines, and believe me, it is definitely a work in progress! The T and the E are complete. I am weaving them with the T lying on its side, but am wondering if the direction would be better if I had started from regular “reading” direction. I thought I’d need fewer butterflies with the sideways weaving, but it didn’t work that way. Any experience weavers want to comment? In the picture below you can see the outline of the next letters to be woven drawn on the warp with a Sharpee. Please keep in mind, this weaving is purely experimental, and I am not endorsing the design or the quality of the weaving! It’s a little embarrassing to even show this stuff!This is the last square to be woven, then I will cut off and warp again. I have to admit that I’m a little nervous about warping again, considering all the problems I had. At least now I know what a warp is supposed to look like on this loom. One thing that I’ve definitely learned here—I am not a weaver of small fiddly weaving. I was thinking that I would weave a bright, colorful face next that would cover the full width of the loom, but I’m afraid the nose, etc. will just be more fiddly stuff which will require lots of butterflies (or bobbins). What to do, what to do. I have a friend who, after taking a weaving workshop, says that it’s always beneficial to learn what you DON’T want to do. Maybe that’s part of my lessons here. Maybe I have a minimum size to be content with weaving. Just thinking out loud…

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No, not text and ikat together, but it could be done. Hmmm…maybe that should be next…

I played around with text in Word, but of course I only printed it out for a cartoon and didn’t save it! Reinventing the wheel here. I used the Word Art feature to copy, paste, and play around with different fonts. When you use Word Art, the text enters the document as a kind of clip art, so you can drag the corners and center to manipulate the text the way you want. Who knows if what I weave will look anything like the intended font. It will be a guide only to getting text into a weaving.

Last week a new chair arrived in my house, via my car from Office Depot. So far, I’m thinking this is pretty nifty. I’ve been needing a chair for using at the ikat board so that my back does not get so stiff and sore. I saw this one in the store—but couldn’t find online :(—and loved it first because, okay, I admit it, I’m shallow—it’s color! Price was reasonable too. When I went to buy it, they explained to me that it is pink with two additional chair covers, chartreuse and purple. Unfortunately, it comes in a box and has to be assembled. I’m loving it so far! The only drawback is that the casters can gather up yarn and cut off ikat tape pieces. Just have to adjust how I do things.

This is board two for the blue section of the ikat piece that I’m working on. After this one is wrapped and tied, I will move on the the red section. There is a temptation to measure and tie several ikat projects at once. Below is an in-progress picture, on which, if it will load larger, there is some explanatory text. And you can see the pile of ikat tape ready to be used on the right. The portion show that is already tied is in 1/8 increments so that the design will appear more rounded when woven. At least that’s the plan!

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First of all, let me say that these pictures do not represent anything that I really like, either design-wise or good craftsmanship-wise. I am simply experimenting in a non-threatening environment. In the top picture, you might notice the line with text. This particular area points out one of the major problems that I have with using soumak lines. I forget the direction with which I am wrapping the warp! To get the top portion of the orange line to be straight, observe that I was entering from the right, and then catch myself when I forgot that.

After reading the appropriate section of Line in Tapestry, I decided to try the spiral next. I am drawn to spirals nearly always, but I prefer to have one a little more filled in. This soumak method might work with a filled in, thicker spiral to kind of smooth out the edges—I just don’t know yet. Obviously, there are a few problems with the spiral technique. When I want a square spiral, I will make it square. All angles in this spiral were purely unintentional and caused by my faulty soumak technique. In a piece that mattered, I would have made corrections. For this I am sticking with the warts! I think a technique like this would work with simple petroglyphs-style of design.  Below is a close-up of the spiral.After reading the posts in the Tapestry Yahoo group for the last few days, I may attempt some text in the last square to be woven. Yes, I said last square! Yippee! Because I am so bored with these small tedious squares. I think I need to try something that fills the available space next. On the other hand, I am also looking forward to finishing this in order to see what kind of whomper-jawed cube I end up with. This started out as a pulled warp idea. Hmmm…

At the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft is a show called Paper Runway. Here is the link for the creator of the above dress.

This is a link about textile mills in North Carolina that have escaped Armageddon.

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The only thing I know about Wonder Woman is that old TV show. You know, Lynda Carter and that revealing outfit? Well, according to the NY Times article, Wonder Woman has been needing a fashion update for a long time. Michael Straczynski is quoted as saying, “What woman only wears only one outfit for 60-plus years?” We all know that the real Wonder Woman lives in our own house.

 Both pictures from the NY Times article.

Labels are on the board above. The cartoon is not the current project, but the idea is the same.

Monday I had scheduled myself to be at the ikat board, after doing my homework assignments for two online classes. I made the cartoon, then went to my ikat table to get started. That’s when I realized that I must have had a different project in mind when I set up the boards. I reset the boards to the width needed for the current cartoon, then realized that I would need to cut more spacer bars. These are the wood boards that go between the ikat boards to keep the boards from getting closer and closer together as you measure the ikat yarns. Get the saw out, cut boards, done! Then I broke one of the pegs in the board, which meant disassembling the whole set-up, finding the appropriate drill bit, drilling out the hole, and redoing the set-up. Then I started measuring. And made a mess of it and spend time untangling yarn. At this point, I decided that it would be better to walk away and do something else!

The whole set-up is shown below. The red arrows show the small boards that I use to piece together the correct width for a project. I’ve used these pictures before, but in case there’s someone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I mention ikat board…

 Above: Bird’s eye view of the ikat boards

Above: Ikat table

Today I was thinking about the flight I took with the boys from Charlotte to DFW. They were very excited, looking out the window as we were approaching the airport, and were both saying, “Lool! We’re going down.” The flight attendant happened to walk by as they were saying this, stopped, and said, “The better word is descending.” We got a good laugh out of this, especially on the return flight, descending into CLT.

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It is so interesting to sit here and hear the rain hitting the skylights on one side of the house and hear a different kind of singing from a mockingbird on the other side of the house. We have not had rain in over a month, so I am absolutely loving this! Yesterday I had lunch with a friend and discovered that it had rained in my neighborhood when I drove home. Although I was grateful for the rain, I was disappointed to have missed it. Then it started again and we received 1.6 inches! A glorious day. Plus, I don’t need to water the veggies! But rain does cause the grass to grow, which brings mowing.

As part of a dye/Munsell color study group, I am putting together sheets like these. At first I was very frustrated because of the difficulty, but then discovered the actual process of doing it. Duh! There’s a process! Tomorrow I am having my work checked by my friend Pat. I have mentioned before her before here. Here is a link to the New Munsell Student Set on Amazon. Not an inexpensive investment.

I have also been investigating database programs. Years ago I used Filemaker Pro and downloaded the free trial of the newest version. You know, they add so many bells and whistles to the programs! I’m not sure I like it better, but will try to withhold judgment for a little while. If I stick with the old one, that will sure save me some money. Any programs that you like and can recommend?

And, speaking of money, I did a dye inventory in preparation for the study group and placed an order with Pro Chem. A BIG order! But no one wants to run out of warp in the middle of a weaving project or dye during a dyeing project. Check out the price of turquoise…Wow!