I decided to call what I do Quilted Art Cloth instead of studio or art quilting.
Before I started quilting, and straddling my career as a weaver, I created art cloth. Art cloth has come to mean a length of fabric, most often silk of some sort, that has been surface designed numerous times to achieve a pattern-layered effect. Usually art cloth is large, as in a piece of yardage (3-5 yards), but not always.
My take on art cloth was to apply several layers of surface design to my own handwoven cloth usually woven with different silks for warp and weft...nearly always beginning with woven shibori, and overdyeing, over-shiboriing, discharging or printing additional layers.
Well, that idea never took off for me, but the surface design stuck and I started to make small quilts with the wonderful fabric samples I was creating. In my book, it doesn't have to be big to be called art cloth. I'm thinking that any fabric that I change the appearance of by any means possible is art cloth. Handmade cloth that's artful.
My other idea while walking was to take several of those art cloth fabrics I created and turn them back into scarves -- which is where a few of them began -- so I can wear and enjoy them. Wow, what a concept! So that's what I've done, and now I have three new handwoven, shiboried silk scarves in my wardrobe.
And now I have another batch of handwoven scarves -- some of which I've never worn but have been holding on to -- that I am going let go of and make available through my Textile Sales Blog beginning this week. I'll let you know when they've been posted.
0 comments:
Post a Comment