work in progress

One of the things that I have been working on for a while is a wedding gift for my friend, Nancy, here are a few studies that I did last week. These studies are placemat size, the wall piece will be much larger, so this how I decided to work out the layout and color placement. I think I like the one with the squares offset and the circles lined up. The whole piece is inspired by a plate that Nancy, a potter, made. The plate will hang beside the wall hanging on their new fireplace.

I used wonder-under to place the circles in the squares and then stitched around the circles to secure them. I think I will stitch into the circles more to "draw" with some rayon threads to tie the piece together a little more.

Again working in a small scale is really pleasing to me. Twenty-five years ago, I was a spinner and weaver trying to make a living selling my work at craft shows. That was truely the slow cloth craft time. When my daughter started kindergarden, I went back to college and got a master's degree in art and taught part time at Marshall University after I graduated. I wove a lot of 3' x 5' bound weave, krobragd rugs during my time at school. I loved weaving, but could not figure out a way to be a full time weaver. I used to joke that I had a master's degree in something that was replaced by the industrial revolution 300 years ago!

I have not done much weaving for a few years the last rug was a wedding gift for my daughter. I think that was about three years ago. I dyed all the weft yarn with natural dyes, much of it indigo. I was pleased with how it turned out. I will have to get a picture of it to post.