A Collaboration Project for Surface Design Class

The next project due for Surface Design is the collaboration project. I was dreading it.....but.....this is an interesting group of five and we have chosen to make a book. But, not just any book, a fabric book with illustrated fabric pages and we will write the story. It will be a modern day cautionary tale with Rumplestiltskin as a reference. Each of the group members will write a segment and then take that segment and illustrate it in fabric. We will make 6 books total, one for each of us and one for Mary Lou. The first segment of the story written by Monique goes likes this: There once lived an old lady named Gretcha on the small island of Lasquiti, a place where sheep run wild and wool is plenty. She worked day and night crafting woolen sweaters, socks and blankets but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t keep up with her bills. One spring afternoon the taxman came nocking, he wished to cease all her assets, as she did not pay her taxes. Gretcha pleaded with the man “please sir, I own naught but this spinning wheel and old loom”. She began to cry and he pitied her, “well then old lady, in payment, will you weave me anything I desire?” “Yes” she cried, “anything!” then my segment goes like this: As the old lady pondered what she would make for the taxman a thought started dancing through her mind. "A nice warm, winter coat might be highly acceptable", she thought and then something else started to nudge it's way into her consciousness. "OK, so he wants me to make something for him to pay for my taxes. I think he isn't going to keep this gift at all...he's going to sell it to make even more money." That didn't sit well with her, knowing that the wool she was going to have to use was the lustrous long staple fibre from her beloved Wensleydale sheep, Norris. Happy thoughts danced through her mind as she thought about the last skein of wool that was left; treasured for decades fromthe time when as a young girl she had woven spells into the magic garments she made. What she wanted most of all now, was to have some peace from the taxman and to help her neighbours and friends to get some peace also. So she wove the beautiful wool into a garment of many colours. She smiled a crooked smile as she thought about the dye used for the wool..poisonous oak, belladonna and some secret herbs grown only in the forests of Lasquiti . She would give the tax collector his coat and when he put it on the little thorns she had secreted in the fibres would claw at his skin letting the poisons into his blood-stream. He would fall into a long, long sleep from which he would not waken for many, many years. see what I mean, this has turned into a really fun project.....I will post further installments as they come in....

Back at school and back in the groove

A bit of an experiment with silk fusion....some silk noil roving I have had since I dont know when and some silk hankies fused with varathane varnish and shaped on the bucket hat shaper from HATSHAPERS Its so amazing to be back at Cap again.....definitely feeds the soul and is a wonderful balance for the craziness of the rest of my life.