What fun it has been to look through my inbox this week! (Images: Above, Grignani 8 – optical inspiration : right B&W14 – Katharina Krönig )
One topic has been foremost and it is so exciting to have so many interesting conversations and fabulous feedback from you about the Woven Optical Illusions project. It is beginning to take shape and I will bring you further information when things are a bit more advanced, although there will inevitably be quite a long gestation period – after all, weaving is not the fastest activity to do!!
It’s not too late to get in touch with your Expressions of Interest! The survey is still live for a little while longer if you would like to let me know what you’d like to see covered in the project, but I’m going to take down both the survey and the free pdf by next weekend, so you don’t have much more time to get your voice heard and potentially to influence the content. Just saying…..(wink, wink).
Coming in a close second has been the wonderful reaction from you to Daryl Lancaster and the idea behind the guest blog series of How I Got Into Weaving. Thank you so much for letting me know just how much you enjoyed Daryl’s piece (which I have forwarded on to her!) and the interest you have in seeing who is going to be writing the guest blog in the future. I’m not going to spill many beans yet, just to say that I don’t think you will be disappointed as there is a wonderful line up of guests coming up!!
In the last couple of weeks, I have been delving into my archive of unpublished work (not that huge, granted!) and rediscovered a monograph I wrote back in 2010 (!!) on stitched double cloth, covering piqué, matelassé and non-chemical cloqué. I am currently updating and revising it and hope to publish it in a couple of weeks or so. Many of you will already know about the free newsletter series available from my website in which I introduce stitched double cloth as well as woven shibori and overshot as techniques for creating dimensionally-textured fabric, but that doesn’t delve as deeply into stitched double cloth as the monograph does. While the monograph focuses on 24S (this was before Daryl’s 8S challenge to me), the technique can be used for less than 24S, and a future publication will be exploring that in much greater depth (and many more pages!!). I am intending to make this original monograph, called Beneath the Surface, available as a pdf and will let you know when it is published and goes ‘live’.
I would also like to take this opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to you lovely people who have been leaving comments and sending me such encouraging messages on Facebook and privately in response to my Reasons to be Cheerful videos. I started these videos as a way to keep my own spirits up during the COVID-19 lockdown and they have resonated with other people too! If you haven’t seen them yet, and you are not on Facebook, you can see them here on Youtube! Do feel free to subscribe to my channel (where you’ll also see my attempts at cello playing – which aren’t too bad for a total beginner!). I love that social media is allowing us to connect outwards at a time when COVID is constraining us to be more inwards in many other ways. (Photo is inspiration from my garden for stitched double cloth)
Do feel free to leave comments below or to get in touch with me directly if you have anything you’d like to share on the topics I’ve covered today.
Two quick links – here is the link for the Woven Optical Illusions survey if you’d like to take part (and get your free pdf!), and here is the link if you’d like to sign up for the free texture newsletter series.
Happy Weaving!
PS. Don’t forget, next week’s guest weaver is Lillian Whipple and I’ll leave you with a photo of one of her exquisite hand-woven cards that graces a shelf in my studio.