Miscellaneous Stuff: Projects, Ideas, Ramblings: Stuff!

Mygod, Zom is funny (also an amazing artist, as you can see). In case y'all might not have seen her comment yesterday (or whatever day it was in Australia, which is like a whole 'nother country, as they say about Texas, except, wait: Australia actually IS a whole nother country, unlike *us*).


Anyway! She said, in her comment on a PhotoCard, "You are going to make me beg aren't you? (this is not a caption.) I am down on my knees... Earl was very pretty but even he cannot make up for no, *sob*, no embellishment, *sob*, no thrift buys, *sob*, no big project posts. A big nada in the textile department.

I am a broken woman."

Which made me laugh so happily I nearly choked on my coffee. So this is for Zom, and for everyone else who loves this stuff like I do. 

First, an explanation: The Big Project is the journal skirt, with gores--that whole experiment in adding gores to a skirt made from a pair of Levi 501's. It will be an on-going project for who knows how long--there's no rush, and there's lots I love to do: stitching, painting, beading, stamping, writing. Lots.

The first thing I did on this was the wave. I showed y'all that here. I thought I was going to show it step by step, but I realized that didn't feel right for two reasons. One, it's not my art. The image, The Great Wave off Kanagawa is, of course, a woodblock print by Hokusai. I love this print and have often thought of someday getting a version of it as a tattoo. I told y'all about the nightmare I've had forever, about the wave building and building and building to crash over me. So while I wanted to use this image on the skirt, I do not condone using other people's images in your work. Absolutely not--not if you're going to show your work or teach it or sell it. No way. That's copyright violation, and it's wrong. Plus it's lazy: use your own stuff. See why I didn't want to use this as a demo? Because I also believe that if you want to use something in your journal, that's your business, as long as you're not copying and selling prints of the pages. So that's one reason I didn't show step by step or do a video. It just didn't feel right at all.

The other reason is that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and everything that's come afterward, is a horrible, horrible tragedy, affecting thousands of people. In the US, especially, we have an embarrassing tendency to co-opt other people's tragedies. Like if we donate money or write about it or contribute to an auction or something, we think we're a part of it. We're not a part of it. It's not about us, even though it *is* about us, in the sense that we're all connected. It always makes me think of Hurricane Katrina and the people from, oh, Newark, who would post to the boards they'd set up online to help people find each other--they'd post to these asking if their favorite restaurant was still there. Sure, they were sad about what had happened to New Orleans, but they were "sad" in a completely different way from, say, the people who lost everything they owned.

It's kind of like Japan and the horrors there and the way it's viewed here. I can only imagine, since the Midland Reporter-Telegram has had almost nothing about it--at least nothing on the front page of any paper I've seen. I've missed a few, of course, so maybe they had in-depth coverage on those days. Yeah, I'll bet that's it. But I'm guessing people here would say, 'Oh, that's so sad. And the price of electronics is going to sky-rocket, too."

So I'm going to show the finished piece--not the whole Big Project, of course, just the one panel--but I do so with reservations. I don't want to encourage people to use other people's images (do as I say, not as I do--did your mother say that to you all the time, the way mine did?), and I don't want for a second to suggest that I'm somehow doing anything at all useful as a response to the events in Japan. I think about if Midland had some huge tornado, a horrible thing, and I survived and read about someone somewhere in Tokyo making a collage with images of tornadoes on it. Am I going to feel helped? I'm guessing not.

So here it is. I stitched the waves, added some beads for the foam/spray. Not too many--I was always conscious that this wasn't a pretty thing, something to look at and go, "Ahhhh! How gorgeous!" 

 On the journal skirts, I add dates and relevant info to remind me of what it is that captured my attention, so that's why the name of the town and the date are there. Not for anyone else, not as a claim to have captured anything. Just for me, as a journal entry. (See why I've been reluctant to post this?)

 The large letters were the punch-out part from some Tim Holtz grungeboard stencils. I saved them. I traced around them with a Micron Pigma, painted them with Jacquard Textile Paint, which I adore, using a stiff fabric brush:  you want to push the paint into the fabric, not lay it on top. Let it dry and heat set it thoroughly, ironing for 3 minutes with a hot iron on the wrong side of the fabric. Then stitch. I used embroidery floss to tie the colors to the colors of paint in the waves. This is where you get to make decisions about how to coordinate and highlight:  colors of beads and paint and floss. What will show up without overpowering? What do you want to emphasize?

This is the heart on the back--a piece of velvet from a dress my mother made when I was 2 or so. I turned it under, stitched it in place, and then sewed on a bunch of beads, trying to make sure it's secure so it won't begin to ravel--I've used little snippets of this velvet on other skirts, and it's so, so fragile and ravel-y. 

Today I've started beading the back yoke. I'll do that for a while until something else strikes my imagination, and then I'll do that. I've got a pair of 501's I cut off long ago and have been wearing as rolled-up capris. They're getting very threadbare, and I'm thinking of starting ANOTHER one of these gored skirts. Yiiiiiii. Why would I do this to myself? Duh: I want to have one to wear while I'm working on the other. Back and forth, back and forth. I wore this one with one of the needles in it, halfway through stitching. Bad idea.

So what are you working on this weekend?