momijigari…momiji to momizu

“The word “momiji” means that trees are changing to their autumn colors and it originates from the old word “momizu”, which means to dye something red.” this from a site “created by ordinary Japanese folks to help foreign nationals better understand the fascinating culture of Japan”, called Treasure House.

“momijigari” refers to the national Japanese passion for viewing the colors of fall leaves as they change throughout the country- much like the spring passion of cherry blossom viewing (hanami).

the seasonal and short-lived beauty of nature is not only a passion in Japan but one artists worldwide have reflected in their works forever- a constant source of inspiration.

the more colors start to change, the more i get anxious to hover over the dyepot. here in southern california we don’t get the full impact of the riotous colors of fall leaves i remember from my time living in Japan and Virginia, so hand dyed silk will have to suffice. i am working on so many things right now in preparation for the Houston show. however much you enjoy the images i post of my work, i encourage you to come and see me in person at one of the upcoming events. there really isn’t anything like meeting you in person. online culture can only take us so far.

and…colored cats being fed colored chow for colored cocoons!

…coming up- some video of last year’s Silk Study Tour and details about the upcoming trip in 2011. spaces still available but we plan to see those filled by the end of november as we are promoting it heavily at the Houston show. happily, we can report that at this point, 75% of the Silk Experience classes at Houston are filled with many people being turned away and put on overflow/waiting lists. interest in silk is definitely on the rise! when i first started doing the shows with my silk the only other booth devoted to silk was maggie’s booth- Silk Things. we will have our booths back to back and up front at the Houston show- come see us in booths 1100 and 1200!

video of long beach quilt festival booth

took me a while to get it up, but here it is. already seems like many yesterdays ago…

what’s in bloom?

the past couple of days have been devoted to flower making and here are a couple of the new blooms-

(to see full image sizes and comments, click on the thumbnail pics)

other things in the making too but no time to preview now- come on by the booth in Long Beach and check it out-#1150

feathering the nest-booth 1150

the female moths are busy laying eggs now and i am busy preparing things for my booth at the upcoming Long Beach Quilt Festival. my booth is my nest of sorts for the duration of the show and i like to see it properly feathered.

jude’s spirit will be with us as well. she is sending this and a few other things for proper feathering.

the ribbons are piling up under the full moon-

some threads will make an appearance in the indigo *department*

(cotton and silk-solids, ombres, shibori’d)

also new in the *indigo department* will be a selection of what i am calling Whole Cloth.
larger pieces of indigo fabrics including my sea and sky fabrics as well as shibori indigo.
due to the time required to make these, they are somewhat limited.
they include cottons, silks, hemp, linen, wool and other interesting fabrics.

above us only sky-left to right-sunny, partly cloudy, & June Gloom

i will be posting up more pics as i can but most of my time over the next week is devoted to nest making.

shibori, silkworms, and other travelers

some days, i find myself feeling a little like this guy- needing to get away from it all. i suppose a respite from the maddening munching crowd was a welcome relief for him- they are getting big enough you can actually hear them eating!

they are just endlessly fascinating! between caretaking them, foraging for local mulberry, dyeing, ironing silk, and a hundred other tasks (class proposals for Cincinatti 2011) orders, and getting things together for the Long Beach show, i decided to close the etsy and big cartel shops for a few weeks. i need fewer distractions in order to get some work together to fill the booth otherwise it feels as if i am a pup chasing its tail! so look for them to open in a few weeks- let you know on that account.

even though i am in Jude’s class i haven’t had time to enjoy it except as an observer of all the wonderful and creative thinking going on over there. that alone is worth the cost of admission. such lovely work and words- nice to see some of my indigo put to use in so many ways. Her next class is here.

we had some travelers stop by the other day. family from Iceland dropped in and we got the boys together as well before one takes off on another band tour. we ate, visited, and of course, had a little time for blue.

the family

some solid blue to go with the moon she made…

AND….the info is out for the 2011 Silk Study Tour to Japan. If you would like to consider going, let me know and I will send you the newsletter via constant contact. I will put a tab up here on the blog soon but have a few other deadlines going today…

now, must go serve the not so tiny masters…

tiny masters and makiage

as micheal so aptly describes silkworms on his famous website Wormspit the silkworms have become my tiny masters. Susan from ito de is also working at raising some too, with varied success. so far i’m good but still i expect i may kill them off at any point in this adventure. here are a few pics at day 5. remember, they were much smaller when they first hatched (hard to believe)-

a few progress pics of the makiage piece you saw in the last post-the front side

back side-

and then the madness that is the drawing up of all these threads- a little more madness than i counted on so to remedy that i made adequate preparations…

it certainly did help-

then the indigo madness began-

culminating in this result-

now before you go all gaga and approve, i have some criticisms of the piece to list. first, while all the stitching lines held and the process in general went well, the overall design is not very desirable for makiage.
hard to tell really that it is a fish (if you didn’t know beforehand). so perhaps a bit too complicated for this size of a piece. i think it would have been much improved to my liking if some of the stitching had been eliminated altogether. while these stencils were fine for kanoko shibori, not all of them will translate well to this application. most though are not this complicated and now that i see this i know better which ones i might choose to use in this way. i will say though that using the powdered (cosmetic grade) ground indigo to brush over the stencil worked beautifully and transferred the design efficiently. i’m going to go through the stencils and pick out a few more that i want to try out. i wonder if any of you out there might be interested in purchasing some cotton marked with the design and stitch them up yourselves… think i will test out the thought at the upcoming Quilt Festival in Long Beach.

off to work…and yes, i do know it is a holiday!

happy vativersary!

things are best expressed in pictures today, so to make note that this is the 2 year “vativersary” of vat #1
(SYNV- see last post). we now have a NATV -natural vat- notice i have taken out the “F” -it’s no longer a fermentation vat.

you can see the first results 2 years ago here.

rainy day break

well, i survived another show.
today is rainy and my car is still packed with my booth. i’ll wait for a break in the rain to unload (i hope!) or just go ahead and do it in the rain i suppose.
the surfers in the house thought they would be going surfing today and i decided in my head that i would join them- build a fire in the rain and cook some food, perhaps sitting in the car, stitching or reading while watching them out on the horizon. but they have checked the surf report and seen that the waves are not to their liking so who knows what will happen today? in the meantime, i curled up on a couch and read some more Burchfield. i find a lot of comfort in his writing- his ups and downs, his highs and lows, torn between belief and disbelief. such passion. i read:

Salem
August 30, 1914
I sometimes feel, as tonight, that not until I at some time give my passions full play will I ever attain any kind of peace. And yet I fully know that such indulgence brings a worse state of mind. Thus is a man always fighting.

i see my feelings about doing shows changing these days. there are lots of reasons-many having to do with the changing tide of my own work. perhaps it is the moon’s gravitational pull on earth. as if the recent moon work is creating its own spring tides and pulling me towards it. i don’t know.
some of the other reasons have to do with the fact that i am creating work that is simply less commercial these days and still trying to support myself. and the work i am creating simply takes a lot of time. while everyone that passes by my booth is quite taken by the beautiful silk, the riotous colors, the fine pleating of the scarves and ribbon, the price remains higher than affordable to many in this economy. i am still figuring all this out and the current economy is proving quite the challenge. i do find it interesting though that while sales are down all over, costs continue to rise. booth fees, shop rents go up. one would think that in order to keep vendors coming back the fees would stay set or even drop a bit but apparently there are waiting lists (or so we’re told) of many waiting their chance to take an empty space.
i do so enjoy the contact with the customers though- really a necessity for me. if i don’t see them face to face from time to time i can’t come up with ideas that inspire them to use what i do make. one of my favorite things at a show is when a mom will bring her kids in. really. i love to talk to them about what they like to do with their creative time. i always give them a length of ribbon to take away and explore. the way they fondle the pleated ribbon, opening and closing it, feeling its softness- you can almost see the wheels turning in their heads. they pick a color- such unexpected happy fun- for both of us!

-then there are the stories like this-
two women come into the booth- gaga over everything- love this, so beautiful, etc., etc., and upon seeing the silk shibori pocket squares, one remarks “oh! my husband would LOVE these!” sensing a sale, i encourage her to open some of them up and as she does she sees the price ($20) to which she says “he’s not worth the $20!” . trying to recover the moment i say “oh come on now, you don’t really mean that”. to which she says, “oh yes i do!” her friend nods and they leave the booth. thankfully. the stories i could tell. well, as you can see, shows have their ups and downs.
i was heartened however, to sell some of my indigo moon bookmarks (a few left over and available at the etsy shop). they took a moment to stop, look and read the description i had written and loved them. you had to slow down a moment to appreciate them and it pleased me greatly that some people did take the time.

Burchfield later wrote:

Salem
September 27 1916
Sometimes I wonder at the Multitude of Ideas I gather- does profusion breed confusion? I think it is rather like the prolific quality of Nature, who scatters seed in such great quantities where only one out of a million may grow.

if i only felt i knew which ones to spend my time and energy on…

Houston Quilt Festival

Wow! What a week- although it’s been more than two since I last posted here.

I won’t belabor the issue but will say the show was a great success on various levels.
Some of the highlights included:

My shibori techniques workshop was a pleasure- overfilled actually and although the main complaint seemed to be that the room was too cold – I was too busy and didn’t even notice it! The other complaint I heard from a couple of gals was that it was hard to follow some of the demos I was doing while they were stitching up their makinui, makiage, and orinui samples. I wanted them to get in as much as possible in their 3 hours and so was demo-ing up front and walking around with samples as I dyed them to get more ideas in front of them for the next stage of the workshop. 3 hours is an awfully short time to cover shibori but my idea is to expose the participants to a variety of possibilities and let them take it from there. In general though everyone was very pleased and many of them came down to visit me in the booth to tell me how much they enjoyed the class and how accessible I had made shibori dying. Perfect!
I will work on making it even better next time.

Despite getting stuck on the 59 North coming in to the show on Thursday (a 20 minute drive turned into an hour and 10 minutes due to a major accident) I arrived for my lecture a mere 10 minutes before it was to start. Yikes! And the wrong equipment had been delivered for the slideshow- the attendant quickly rectified that ( Quilts Inc Ed staff is fantastic!) and I spread my samples out and started talking. Phew! I felt a bit scattered but was told it didn’t show- you know me, I can talk quite a while about shibori… but what I really wanted to get across was the idea that we have so much to learn from traditional crafts people that can be translated into our contemporary works and that although it takes a bit of effort to make these connections with international artisans it is so much easier now with the internet and all that we have access to these days. Of course I shared many stories of the trip to Japan and the artisans we met – the hour was almost up before we got to the slideshow. I have more I would like to do with this topic and am letting it brew and steep in my mind….

Many thanks to Katrina for covering my booth that morning while I made my way down after the lecture and also while I dashed off to do a “meet the teachers ” presentation on the show floor for 30 minutes that same morning.
(thanks Katrina!!)

Another highlight was that I got to meet my FB friend Elaine Lipson! Now how fun is that? She is a writer and book editor for Interweave Press and the instigator of Slow Cloth- having come out of the natural foods industry and writing on the slow foods movement there. You might know her as the writer behind her blog, Red Thread Studio. We had a great dinner at one of my regular Houston stops The Black Labrador and were able to include Katrina Walker (who teaches sewing with silk) and my friend Jennifer from Atlanta who is known for globe trotting in search of fabulous textiles and trims. Quite an inspired evening!

We also had a little “mini-reunion” of our Japan tour group. There were 7 of us attending the show and what fun to see their faces again! Shouting out here to June, Maggie, Brenda , Mary Alice (and crew), Helen, & Katrina- let’s do it again sometime!!

I know this is turning into a rather long post but here I sit Saturday morning with HEAPS of work ahead of me (thank goodness!) and the possibility of getting back to do another post over the next week rather dim. So this may be it for a while and before these thoughts fade into the past I best get them out now.

Crazy quilters are getting into the action with my ribbons and Barbara from Roses on the Water made some lovely things with the shibori ribbon she picked up at the show. Crazy Quilters Online Magazine will also feature an article on my ribbon and shibori work in the next issue (online only) that comes out tomorrow or Monday I’m told. Thanks Julie!
One of my favorite crazy quilt teachers, Julie Craig, is also carrying the ribbon in her shop- Attic Heirlooms. She doesn’t have a website but is located in Wichita KS at:

2129 S Lark CT
Wichita, KS 67209-1252(Wichita, KS Metro Area)
Phone: (316) 265-4646

I also made a little “splurge” purchase at Carola Pfau’s textile booth which was all too conveniently located a mere 3 booths away down the aisle. She has some delicious hand spun and hand woven linen (eastern european and pre WW2). It’s about 22″ wide and I bought a 2 yard piece to do an indigo wall panel- hope I don’t mess it up! It should suck up that indigo like crazy!
I also bought a nice little haori that had an intriguing shibori pattern in indigo on it. All creamy silk jacquard with a touch of indigo makiage motifs capped off from the ground fabric. The makiage motifs even have some kanoko designs in the centers. I love makiage and its possibilities!

I included the label image which is from the Daimaru Kyoto “depato” . It has a rich history and actually started off as a kimono textile and dry goods shop in 1717. The Japanese have a long history of retailing and they are famous for their department stores.
According to one online source:
“Daimaru is one of the most eminent department stores in Japan. Osaka has two branches of this department store; one is in; Shinsaibashi and another one is in Namba.The history of Daimaru traces back to O-Mojiya, a dry goods story in Kyoto which was established by Shimomura Hikoemon Masahiro in 1717.The name ‘Daimaru’ was first used to name to store in Nagoya called Daimaruya and it was inaugurated in 1728. Daimaru was the greatest retailer in Japan for many years in the 1960s.”
I have no idea of the age of this piece but it must be fairly recent (mid 1940′s-1970′s).
I could keep going but must get to work now- the musicians are all out touring and I have the place to myself for the week!!

Upcoming events are posted on my Facebook fan page too- join up if you like! Click on the “events” tab at the top.

Forgot to mention- the quilt exhibits were great too- you can see some of them here. For video tours of the show- go here!

every inch an adventure

inching along...

You might say that could be me in the photo above, inching along in my preparation for Houston show. I am making progress but at the same time so much to do! I have dyed up so much lovely ribbon but darn if people don’t just keep ordering the stuff! I’m gonna be setting a cutoff date soon on when I will stop shipping. Probably by Monday the 5th- be advised! Won’t ship again until after the 20th of October.

As I was working these past few days I started thinking (uh-oh..) about my product and what exactly it is I am selling. Yes, of course I am selling silk shibori ribbon (speaking only about the ribbon now) but what is the ribbon really? One silky yard of lovely color, pleated, undulating cool silk made with the spit of a worm. It represents perhaps the promise of something beautifully crafted by hand, some free time to create, a gift, a challenge, a little piece of something to inspire. It’s a little piece of me too, in a way. A piece of my story, my persistence,
my desire to make and to create. My desire to spread that and infect more people to take a little adventure into creativity. I’ve become an adventure capitalist! So come on among- join the adventure. Come on by and see me in Houston at the International Quilt Festival (Oct.13-18) in booth 728 where every inch is an adventure!

My shibori workshop has been sold out for some time (as have many of the Silk Experience workshops-look for a surge in sewing with silk!) but I have an open lecture on Thursday morning -come on by! (New shibori workshop scheduled in LA at the Japanese American National Museum March 27, 2010-contact JAMN for info-limited to 25.)
Back to it- getting ready to ship my booth stuff…