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Recollections in Cloth, Paper and Thread

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Scrapbook first decade stitched

I could just be my age. For something different to work on in the studio I decided to break down my life into decades. Now I am into my eighth, not by a lot, but enough to make some choices of how I see that decade unfolding. There are eight panels of cloth all close to 18″ square. They were selected as a background feel for that period of my life. Here is the first decade. I am a child in a rural community who spends an enormous amount of time outside in the woods and meadows. Old farmhouses in northern Michigan.

I am not a very accomplished stitcher. It takes a while just to get that needle threaded and knotted at the other end. Then it is poke in some place and come up in another.  All the added pieces of papers and cloth were fused into place with a fabric bonding film. Loose bits were tied into place until they could be caught with the stitches.

This piece is trying to capture how those years felt to me, the things that stayed with me. The constellations in a very dark and star filled sky, old wallpapers, some falling away, marked cloth, grandmothers’ influences, the dullness of winter and snow, using only two crayons to wander out of the lines of coloring books. But most of all was the freedom to come and go, come and go and be by myself.

Here are some details of this “page”.

scrapbook first decade grass

scrapbook first decade snow

And now I have finished stitching the second decade. Those teenage years. A move from the woods and privacy to the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Florida in 1955 was a unwelcome adjustment. But being a teenager is constant adjustments, constant changes.

These pages will be bound into a very large scrapbook like we used to have many years ago. The kind we pasted in all our plans for the future. Now it will be pages of how things actually were or at least how I recall them to be. As the pages turn, there will be the marks of the previous decade shown to the left of the new decade. The viewer can see the marks of influence more or less of what is happening next. I think that this is where being a lousy stitcher is an advantage. Those threads and how they travel around on the back of the previous decade’s page is very narrative in its own way. Here is how a section of the two pages will be seen where they intersect.

scrapbook second decade pairing lo res

Wandering in the woods no longer possible with sandspurs everywhere. A red tide that came often enough to make the beach un-navigable. And finding it hard to fit into a predetermined system. I managed like we all do and actually found this a fun page to work on.  See below.

scrapbook second decade stitched lo res

I was now making my own clothes and still maintained my freedom for most of the time. Some details of the page.

scrapbook second decade if you alter

scrapbook second decade detail of shell lo res

I may go back into both of the pages. More is bound to develop in thought and manipulation. And some of these details I really liked and took them into a photo program to play with. I see possibilities for etchings using my press or maybe even collographs. Maybe drawings.

What I do like is finding the marks that are possible with needle and thread that capture my thinking. Better stitching may come as I work on each page. Before I show you the altered image of a detail from my first decade, take a look at how much my eighth decade shares a similar palette. Interesting I think because those other pages get pretty colorful with marriage, family, entering the craft world, then graduate school and travel. Interesting.

Here is the roughed in eighth decade that will take some time to get to as I must do them in order.

scrapbook 8th decade lo res

And the altered image of my first decade detail.

scrapbook first decade detail adjusted 2

I will show more as they develop.

Another Time – Lost in Customs

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Graceland Under African Skies lo res

This is a digital image from a scanned slide. Earlier this week Richard Norman, a book binder who moved from the UK to France several years ago posted two entries on facebook of Paul Simon performing in Africa in the late eighties. They both were songs from his still inspiring album, Graceland. Besides having me humming along as I listened, they reminded me of the Graceland coats I made shortly after the album was released.

I bought the music, came home put it on the player and found out just how easy it can be to be caught up in his lyrics and rhythms. I promptly went to the closest fabric shop and decided to find cloth that could work for the scenes he describes in the music. Primarily two pieces, Under African Skies and Boy in the Bubble (which may have a different title, but that is what I called it).

I asked the sales clerk if she had cloth that felt like an elephant, a Masai warrior or could be a lion, it had to say Africa! After buying bits of each cloth that I thought would work and several yards of off white osnaberg cloth which is like a muslin, I came home only to realize that I had no pattern for what I wanted to do, no coat pattern.

So I folded the cloth in half, selvages on each side and laid down in the center with my shoulders on the fold. With the right hand I pinned along where I thought a sleeve should be by keeping my left arm extended. Then a couple of pins a ways out from my hip. The rest of the length could be figured out after I got back up. Once that side was cut out (both layers for front and back) I folded over that side to make a pattern to cut the other side. Flattened it back to where it was and cut up the top layer to make the opening and scooped out a bit of neck. I repeated this again with a small striped muslin for the liner of the coat.

All I had to do next was place the outer coat on the mannequin, turn up the music, lay out some National Geographics and start cutting and pinning. It was the most fun afternoon. Shortly afterwards I heated up some blue dye in a pot on the stove, shoved the shoulder area in to give myself the “African Sky”. Later I embroidered the “stars of the southern hemisphere.”

Once the outer layer met my expectations (which I kept pretty simple) I matched it up with the lining and added a layer of filler between. To finish it took just edging the front opening and hemming up the cuffs and bottom.

Then I made another:

Graceland Boy in the Bubble 1988 lo res

More dyed shoulders for the Boy in the Bubble. Had to have a place for that “distant constellation.” And doing the bomb in the baby carriage was interesting to say the least. It was one of the last pieces that my mother helped me stitch on before she died. I think she thought I was nuts. I loved these pieces.

I even wore one to a national quilt conference in Houston, Texas of all places. I just wanted to be in the audience with it on. It was swelteringly hot!

I was also active at basket making conferences at this time and some of us who taught had to do a talk to the attendees. I took my boom box so I could play the two pieces of music when I showed the slides. Not only that but I had shaped little rounds of black paper into fortune cookies with a curled quote about art making sticking out. The audience was to help themselves to one of these from my African basket on the way out. In all honesty I did receive some strange looks but I loved what I was doing and just wanted to share the enthusiasm.

Later on after moving myself and my coats to North Carolina, I decided to mail some of my art to wear on to Australia. There they were more likely to wear it than in my more conservative crowd. The first box arrived fine and donned the chairs in the dining room for years there in that most hospitable house.

The next box that contained these coats among other costumes did not fair so well. I received word that I had insured them too high and they were being held hostage in customs for a fee, $65, I think. I emailed customs there and apologized for my error and begged them to please release them. And I actually thought it worked.

After two stays at their home I realized that the coats I had sent a few years before were not there. They only could have went the way of the unclaimed at customs and met some sort of demise. But I would like to think that somewhere over there a customs inspector’s spouse puts them on when she plays Paul Simon’s Graceland album and dances around with all the pleasure I put into them.

And This Utterly Familiar Thing

Posted on by Sandy Webster

landscape 3

I am returning for a bit to “the things I used to do.” Mainly it is the graduate work on a series of books about the men of Brasstown and my relationship within the group on a daily basis. I made a file box and then the books, all had to be black and white and all had to in some way reflect my favorite quote from Thomas Wolfe. Above is one of several simple Carolina moon landscapes in tapestry. Each previous page had a window into the next bit of stitch and weave.

Below is the progression of a variation on the old practice of changing collars. I will show the last page first as it has Thomas Wolfe’s quote in total. The entire book was shaped like collars.

turning collars last pageturning collars title pageturning collars

turning collars page 1turning collars page 2turning collars page 3

turning collars page 4turning collars page 5turning collars page 6

There are several books in the file box. Here is another with marks made from things found around their common work space.

marks

And here is our separate places of “work”.

where we worked

I used black and white photography back then because I had access to dark room equipment or sent the film off to be developed. This process is so much easier now with iphone and photo programs.

tunnel book

A tunnel book of what the men and I would see every day….the common things.

men at work

good woman

And their clothes and rags collected and used to represent our common presence on a daily basis. I think this one is my favorite of all of the books. It is a book I could open and feel their very existence through the cloth. My time with them is represented by the passing through of the black stitching.

our clothes

our clothes last page

Funny how this format of the accordion book returns when I am telling a story.

The other day I was working on an idea I had about taking the decades of your life and placing the pieces that represent best that time. So lets say birth to ten years of age, then teen years, twentys, you get the idea. It was a strange and sometimes discomforting process. I chose eighteen inch squares of cloth of varying materials that felt right for that time of my life. Then proceeded to select bits of fabric, pieces of wallpapers, images, etc. A total of eight pages are somewhat finished as far as the selections and placements go, but now have to be stitched….lots of stitching. I want them to look and act like the very old scrap books we used to have. The soft pages folding over to the left and showing the marks of what held you together for the next phase of your life.

My friend, Patti, and I thought it would be a good class to teach because I do so much with teaching memory vessels. It simply won’t work. There is way too much that you need to have at hand and it is such a personal story. I won’t even get to the stitching part until later in the winter when holding cloth with needle and thread comes easier for me.

But to close off this return to the familiar, here are two of the “quilts” I made about the men with their cloth and my stitching. I used their tools to ink up and make marks and wrote a bit about them in places. The final image is a small bit of practice on type setting I made using my small wood block and type at the Women’s Studio Workshop in upstate New York during my time with the men…maybe 1998.

patriarch quilt 2

Patriarch quilt 1

the familiar

This is the decade of the fifties page. There is a few collected objects on it as well as cloth and papers. It is the time of going back to college and then graduate school and how that opened new ways of seeing for me, new ways of understanding the importance of the familiar.

I will come back to this as I proceed on the scrap book. But for now this is just a small return to the things I used to do based on a discovery in a fabric box.

 

 

Finishing Up – well sort of – Down the Rabbit Hole

Posted on by Sandy Webster

book on board shear

This blog is just a wrap up of how the book was put together.

After printing ten books worth of pages, twenty sheets per book and all but the three return sides of the covers and colophon required going through the printer.  Everything was laid out and saved in Microsoft Publisher so it was just a matter of bringing them up, making sure to check the right paper type and best photo options. Each page had to be loaded separately as most printers do not like being asked to do multiples of heavier paper and can get a bit off which is not a good thing.

My board shear was a tremendous help in the constant trimming of pages to the size of approximately 8.5 x 7 inches. The back cover is cut longer as it has to be the spine wrap as well.

using a straight edge

With twenty separate sheets per book there needed to be nineteen hinges made. I used a cotton office paper (white) cut into 7″ by 1/2″ strips and then carefully folded in the center. The book pages are stacked in the order they are to be pieced together in front of a metal yard stick that is weighted so as not to move. This allows me to align the sheets. A small glue plunger is the best for the very little amount of glue needed on each side of the folded hinge.

They will be glued by doing all foredges first. That means the mountain fold of the hinge is placed up and the left side is glued to the edge of the sheet to be on the left side. Here is the back cover and last piece to be paired and glued on the foredge.

foredge hinge

When gluing the right to the left on the hinge I brought them as close together as possible without overlapping them. Each pair of sheets is checked on both sides to make sure they are properly glued down.  Paper cuts along the edges of the sheets and hinges can easily happen. Just the smallest amount of blood can not be wiped away on the good papers that I used and once a sheet needed to be pulled away and a new one printed. After that I kept a paper towel between finger and paper edge.

paper towel handy

After the stack of ten double sheets are glued together it is time to adjoin them together using the hinge valley side up for the spine edge of the book. Here I did not butt them up close but left enough space for the pages to fold against each other without buckling the edges.

spine glueing valley fold hinge

I kept them aligned along the straight edge and folded the book together as each hinge is dried in place.

lining up pages for glueing

I used a bone folder with a thin edge to crease the cover in two places where it wraps around to become the spine of the book and glue to the underside of the cover.

spine gap before filler

To reinforce the spine I covered a piece of book board with lokta paper that fills the gap between the spine hinged pages and the creased cover spine.

spine filler being madespine filler glued down

Here is the finished book.

finished book open

As of right now there are only five books completely finished and five more printed. I am very happy that there will only be an edition of twenty of these. Now I am wondering what to do with all the cut offs from the pages. I might try to print on them using my etching press. Christmas cards is a possibility.

book page waste

It seems a waste not to use these somehow. There will be close to 400 when I get this edition finished. Next week I am taking a break and going to a friends in Asheville just to get out of the studio and have a good visit over a bit of single malt.