THESE TEXTILES TELL A CULTURAL HISTORY

"MANDELA MANDALA"

Title credit: HRG.

"African textiles are distinctive for their vibrant colors, bold patterns, and batik dyes that give the fabric a unique crackled texture. But I had no idea that some of the trendiest of these prints are actually designed and produced in the Netherlands by a company called Vlisco."

More here.

This pattern featuring iPods is another, more recent example of a print that incorporates technology and modern life while maintaining Vlico's classic batik style. This pattern is popular in Nigeria. 

by Hillary Fayle. More here.

Textile Exhibit at the Met

In October, I joined this Metropolitan Museum employee for lunch and a look at this interdisciplinary exhibition:

“Fashion and Virtue: Textile Patterns and the Print Revolution, 1520–1620” 

The exhibition brings together a combination of printed pattern books, drawings, textile samples, costumes, paintings, and various other works of art to evoke the colorful world in which the Renaissance textile pattern books first emerged and functioned.

Charity knitting

Once a month I visit the store, Knitty City, and join the group BIG APPLE KNITS. This is their logo.



We crochet and knit for charity and it is great fun.  Belonging to the group is a young woman I knew as a student at PS 87, her mother ... and Marjory, who I worked with at A&E back in the 1980s!

Some stuff I made for a baby shelter:

Brooklyn Fiber Festival

Weather wise its such a lovely day.  Took an Autumn trip out to Brooklyn to see pretty colors and change my latitude and attitude.

“Neofunky crochet fine textile art“

Crochet artist Xenobia Bailey.  More here.

Bunny Red Ears

Fabric from Hannah's old flannel nightie 

Amigurumi created at Cranberry Lake

To donate to needy children via the Big Apple Knits group that meets in Knitty City every month.

Post script in December 2015 - Gave Tseitl, the turtle, to Hannah's grandfather as he was recovering from open heart surgery in the hospital.

Shawl!

Appealing image

Avery's doll

Greenport visit with Cara and Anders and their cheerful little dog, Avery.

One always brings a present when invited to dinner.

The doll's nose is a bell.

Picture from the pattern instructions:

First made such a gift back in 2009 for Ophelia.

R.I.P.

The Kuna: the endangered last tribe of the Caribbean

From the Guardian Newspaper:
Photographer Eric Lafforgue documents the island tribe, whose existence is threatened by rising sea levels. The Kuna live on the San Blas islands off the coast of Panama.There are roughly 50,000 Kuna, who are one of the largest remaining indigenous South American tribes. More here.

Kuna women make and wear long strings of beads 

which they wrap around their wrists and ankles

The traditional beaded leg ornaments are made in beautiful geometric patterns

The colourful molas are also sold as decorative pieces

African Textiles at the Cooper Hewitt Museum

Architect David Adjaye mines the museum’s permanent collection for the 12th exhibition in the ongoing Selects series. 

On view in the Marks Gallery, the exhibition features 14 West and Central African textiles from the museum’s textile holdings, including an Asante kente cloth from Ghana, a bògòloanfini mud cloth from Mali, a Dyula ikat wrapper from Ivory Coast and a Yoruba indigo dyed wrapper from Nigeria.

With Alice

The Pattern and Decoration movement

  

Pioneering Feminist Arts Miriam Schapiro died recently and in her obituary I learned more about The Pattern and Decoration Movement.

Quotes about this movement from her obit:

....creating collage works that straddled the line between painting and textile art, incorporating lace, sequins, needlework, and other traditional women's art objects collected from women across the country.

Schapiro dubbed such work "femmage."

"The thing about Pattern and Decoration for us feminists was that in women's traditional art you see pattern and decoration. And of course the decorative was always considered a trivialization," Schapiro explained.  Her work looked to combat such prejudice, and to elevate craft and domestic culture.

Hidden Chambers by Joyce Kozloff

Quotes about this movement from The NY Times:They all asked the same basic question: When faced with a big, blank, obstructing Minimalist wall, too tall, wide and firmly in place to get over or around, what do you do? And they answered: You paint it in bright patterns, or hang pretty pictures on it, or drape it with spangled light-catching fabrics. The wall may eventually collapse under the accumulated decorative weight. But at least it will look great.

And where do you find your patterns and pictures and fabrics? In places where Modernism had rarely looked before: in quilts and wallpapers and printed fabrics; in Art Deco glassware and Victorian valentines. You might take the search far afield, as most of these artists did.

They looked at Roman and Byzantine mosaics in Italy, Islamic tiles in Spain and North Africa. They went to Turkey for flower-covered embroideries, to Iran and India for carpets and miniatures, and to Manhattan’s Lower East Side for knockoffs of these. Then they took everything back to their studios and made a new art from it.

New Groups

During the World Wide Knit in Public Day, I found out about some local groups. Stopped by two this week and met some lovely women.  I plan to attend on a regular basis in the future.

1) BIG APPLE KNITS meets at Knitty City and creates stuff for Charity.  They are working on blankets for veterans with 12x12" squares.  I started the flag at the meeting and made these others at home with the yarn they gave me. The middle blue square is actually knitted with the basket-weave stitch!

2) NYC Crochet Guild hosts a "Meet-up" at the St. Agnes Library once a month. These women are involved in many groups and are very welcoming.

This shawl is my first big knitting project and is not considered to be a success.  In the winter, as I read in bed, I like a shawl to cover my shoulders and back.  I have a really old crocheted one with lots of little pieces of color.  I made this one to match the red afghan I use in bed.  But I don't like how it turned out.  

 - Not big enough to be effective in covering my shoulders and chest
 - Curls at the bottom
 - Color changes don't work with this fancy pattern

I will use these colors in my next attempt: a rectangle shawl!

Here's the model from the pattern via Lion Brand Yarns

Good Golly... I just realized that I was wearing this shawl upside down! 

Looking more carefully at the model, I notice the lacy V holes point upward. 

    LOL!     

It works better this way, but it is still too skimpy. 

Sunday June 14 is FLAG DAY.  

Let's celebrate Betsy Ross, fiber artist.