Il bloggo is a craft blog from Sweden written by ihanna, about life and crafting. Ihanna is big on trying new crafts and seems to be good at just about everything she tries. From making rag rugs, renovating old furniture with thrifted fabric, to gorgeous dolls, but one of her main interests is collage, art journalling and mixed media.
cake + pie and freshly blended are hosting a holiday ornament swap. You’ll make 8-10 ornaments and get the same back. Signups go until November 1.
October entries are closed.
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What was your favourite entry?
Gardening Man brooch by Abbott and Ellwood.
I’ve just come back from Origin, the new London craft fair. I was exhibiting and selling my work in the first of the two weeks. All in all we were 300 exhibitors, including the 24 emerging talents showing their work at Springboard.
Wall Sketch by Lizzie Farey.
Despite all the hard work it involves to take part in an event like that I thoroughly enjoy it. I love meeting the public, the trade buyers and the students to talk about my work. I love selling my work! I love meeting collegues from other parts of the world or just next door…
Turquoise ruffle bag by Louise Turner
In the stall next to me was Louise Turner, I believe she originally trained as a costume designer and one can tell from her vibrantly imaginative bags.
Little Moth book kit by John Dilnot.
My curiosity was tickled by John Dilnot’s one-off box works and his little books af various nature inspired topics made in numbered limited editions of 500.
Garrick silk cushion by Ruth Singer.
Ruth Singer exhibited her scarfs and cushions at Springboard, here is her impressions of the event.
I’ll be back with more from Origin - so much to see and report about! In the meantime, read more about what I saw at Origin on my blog and on d*s guest blog. And there is Abigail’s pre Origin post here at whip up on jeweller’s taking part.
The use of craft in contemporary art.
Edited by Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro
Published by Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
I want to begin this review by saying that I love this book, I really hope that this book is the first of a whole series of such books. If you have not read this book, and the chances are you haven’t because it is a new release, then I must explain. This book is all about the handcraft movement and how it is being used, nay embraced, by contemporary artists as their medium of choice. We are undergoing unsettled times politically, environmentally and socially, and I think it is especially interesting and important that traditional handcrafts are being incorporated into fine arts and design now, perhaps as a backlash against the excesses of a consumerist society and technology filled lives. This art is slow art, with an emphasis on the process and the materials, and a need to express personal experiences rather than grand social messages.
The book begins with an introduction about the philosophy of the handmade movement and then introduces each artist with wonderful images of their work and an artist statement. There seem to be equal numbers of men and women as well as a good mix of mediums and art practices, with embroidery, book arts and fashion design receiving equal space to knitting, sewing and crochet. I was drawn to many of the works visually and then upon reading the artists own words I was able to really relate to their thought processes.
Many of the artists who use traditional craft techniques don’t think of themselves as subverting the medium, just using it to express their ideas, while they acknowledge the power of such a way working and the political statement that using domestic arts makes. Kent Henrickson, whose embroidery depicts death and evil deeds, uses the innocent and decorative medium of embroidery. While Barb Hunt, who knits bombs, uses a medium that is traditionally used to warm and protect,
Margarita Cabrera is also a textile sculpture artist. She sews domestic appliances, and has also sewn a life-size Volkswagen Beetle, as a statement about the mexican workers on the border. Her work is polically motivated but very personal she says of her life as a migrant “I have travelled from one cultural context into another. As a result, disorder and disruption have a particular resonance in my work”.
Dave Cole’s works are knitted sculptural pieces, that are the culmination of a laborious and intense process and use unusual materials, such as his huge teddy bear that is made from fiberglass insulation hand knitted with urethane fixative. He says “There’s something compelling about taking a long time to make something. The process becomes important.” … “I’m subverting the feminine process. … [and] i’m subverting the masculine material. … co-opting the domestic process to say something about masculinity.”
Many artists re-use materials to make a statement in their work. Recycling as a political or a personal statement has become a powerful way of expressing ideas. electricwig are a design duo, who use recycled materials to open discussion about consumerism. While dymano-ville, a doll making duo, make one-off unusual dolls from a variety of recycled fabrics and by doing this are able to embed personal histories and nostalgia into their art. Another artist who uses knitting as a tool for remembering is Robyn Love, who makes knitted memorial cozies, for statues for grave stones and sign posts.
There are many more artists in the book whose work is original, thought provoking, quirky and funny and serious. These artists make use of many different materials and methods of working and are well worth further exploriation. This is a book that I can read over and over and over again, I will use it as a reference and as inspiration. A really great book, congratulations to the publishers for seeing the worth in this idea and to the editors for seeing the worth in this form of artwork.
Knitwear designer and awesome embroiderer, Kristin Nicholas, has a great duplicate stitch tutorial on her blog — Getting Stitched on the Farm.
Fairly newish blog on the scene is heather bailey, designer and talented crafter. With a new fabric range out with free spirit and an obvious eye for colour and fun design this is one blog to come back to. I especially like her pics of her daughter in gorgeous outfits. With the occasional very good tutorial and lots of ideas.
A few readers letters and link suggestions:
Patricia sent in this letter about a doll artist she knows.
I am sending you this link from MySpace. The doll artist is local Nashville artist Chandra Cerchione-Peltier. She is fun and a great person and makes some of the most beautiful, intriging dolls I’ve ever seen. I thought of Chandra immediately when I saw todays post. It is worth including her link.
Marianne wrote in with this cute bunny hat tutoria.
I don’t know the procedure for this, but I ran across this great tutorial today on a blog: Luckybeans.
Bonnie McCaffrey wrote in with a correction:
I just want to say thank you so much for including a link to my VidCast on your website. If possible, I would love for one small correction - I’m American, not British. I was visiting the quilt show in England and did the VidCast from there.
Thanks
Bonnie
Christa wrote in with a link to her online shop: The Home Grown Market
The place to buy and sell unique, hand-crafted products from American Small and Home-Based Businesses.
If you are in Vancouver on Oct 21 it might be worth checking this out: Craftynest
first annual Craftynest Bazaar on Saturday October 21, 2006 from 11am - 5pm at the Legion Hall on Commercial Drive (2205 Commercial at 6th). More than 35 vendors will be there from around B.C. selling their hand made crafts.
Lisa from the three chickadees wrote in to let us know about their new textiles site.
Hi! We love your site. We get many hits on threechickadees.com from it. Someone posted about one of our belts just once, and we’ve had lots of visitors as a result! I thought your readers might be interested in our new textiles site, which sells patchwork madras fabric.
Whiptips - a crafts advice column for readers to ask questions or offer advice by leaving comments. View the Whiptips archive here. You can submit questions, to whiptips@gmail.com. Please include photos with your questions!
Kari at Craftyginger is asking for some pocket and zipper advice.
I was just wondering if [anyone] had any tips for inserting different kinds of pockets in bags? I’m working on a knitting tote and just can’t decide which kinds of pockets will work best for me. Thanks!
What is something which is a bit Mattise - like, something that children and most adults can really enjoy doing? Both sized hands - little and large can paint with tissue paper and make collages using translucent materials.
First, think it through … (or perhaps not!) Make a drawing of a landscape, a portrait, an abstract or a still life. For the support or backing, find a piece of heavy card stock, watercolor paper, mat board or just heavy drawing paper. Then get out the tissue paper. Cut it up with some of your ideas you drew first on the other piece of paper. Add some new ideas you glean from the enjoyment of tearing and cutting paper. Mix up some non toxic Elmer’s type white glue and water - half and half. Lay down your tissue and use lots of the glue mixture on your brush and not your fingers, to keep things sticking to the paper well. 
Paint over the top of the tissue with the brush and it will work out the best. Use strokes from the center of the paper out to the edge of the paper. Small pieces work better than large. Tiny ones are a bit tedious for some and others love the challenge. Try layering colors to make new colors. Try to cut the paper in one region of your table and carry it over to the glue them down. When you are done, you can try adding some of these other techniques if you wish you can stop there or add some of these really easy extras:
2 more days to get your whiplash entry posted.
As I’m taking part in Moki’s stamped fabric swap my focus and crafty thoughts* have lately been about how to print onto fabric. This swap in particular was about block printing.
One of the bloggers I received fabric from was Creative Kismet, she went all out. She also kindly posted a tutorial on her process. Love the idea of the matching card and twill tape.
Going through my bloglines I also came across One Girl’s leaf printing tutorial. Sweet.
These are just a couple of ways of printing onto fabric yourself. You can also inkjet, use fruit and vegies and rubber stamps. Would love to see anyone else’s ideas or links, please feel free to leave comments!
* For another post, what’s your crafty creative process? Do you even realise that you might have a process? It might not be written anywhere but you probably do have some form of process. Something to think about…
bloody bunny is a really original and quirky craft blog from Germany. There is a quite a big focus on amigurumi (crochet toys), but also sewing and drawing as well, lots of experimentation going on. These crochet bombs are pretty out there (and were mentioned on boing boing recently). It is this sort of weird and cool stuff that keeps me checking in.
by Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck
Published by Henry Holt & Co.
A novel, set in Paris and a small town outside of Paris. A sweet novel, with an uncertain love story, and lots of descriptive sewing scenes. It is a story of a sad middle aged man who is changed by his infatuation with a beautiful and unnatainable woman. His life is altered by meeting her, he becomes obsessed and his behaviour and charactor changes quite dramatically.
While his unpredicatable behavour makes the story interesting it is the other charactors that flesh out the book. The distasteful wife, the insipid lover, the interesting but not often seen best friend and sister. The most interesting charactors had only a small spot, I wanted to know more of the nephew and his girlfriend whose story was really the climax of the book. The drawn out scenes of Claude sewing and designing clothes I thought were a bit over done, while descriptions of Paris and the surrounding towns, I thought could have done with a bit more fleshing out. A lovely story with a slightly mad and sad middle and uncertain ending.
In my first post for Whip Up I thought I would tell you about some of the work I saw at Origin this year. In this and my next few posts I hope to reveal a little about traditional crafts and unusual materials, mainly by British makers. I’m a textile designer, but I trained to be a museum curator and have a long-standing interest in historical crafts. Origin is Britain’s biggest and best contemporary craft fair, so those selected by the Crafts Council are not traditional as such. Some of them use traditional techniques or materials in new and contemporary ways. I wont be covering ceramics as that is done beautifully by Karin Ericksson, and will only touch on jewellery because Abigail Percy has already picked some lovely examples.
It was a pleasure to be exhibiting alongside many wonderful makers. I was showing as part of an exhibition of emerging makers called Springboard. Two of my fellow exhibitors really caught my eye.
Jo Pond makes jewellery using unconventional materials and non-traditional jewellery shapes. She showed a quirky collection of pieces mostly made from animal skin. It was amazing how she had made this unlikely material look so delicate and exquisite.
Kate Brightman’s bold and striking pieces were a complete contrast. She works in metals, plastics and resin, but I particularly liked her wooden collection, made from turned rosewood with gilding. The simplicity of the shapes was really effective and the richness of the wood with the yellow gold was really appealing, and somehow wintery.
Among the other exhibitors, Lizzie Farey caught my eye. Her modern basketry was delightful, particularly the pieces with catkins and pussy willow still attached.
Su Blackwell makes beautiful paper sculptures from old books, with the characters or scenes literally leaping from the page.
Gesso-work is something you don’t see often. It is the application of a type of plaster onto wood or other surfaces, which is then painted and gilded. It was used as the base for medieval decorative carvings and paintings. Adam Wahby uses gesso with pewter inlay to create stunning decorative pieces.
Papier-mache deserves a revival and Magie Hollingworth is leading the way with her moulded spoons, garden implements and bowls. I loved her use of old children’s book pages as decoration and adored the glossy black mini bowls.
Maiko Dawson is an amazing shoemaker, using traditional techniques to create bespoke shoes with great style. I love the ones with circles on – one of my friends has them and swears by their comfort.
More next week from week two.
A Whiptips reader asked about favorite notions one would use to assemble a sewing basket for a new sewer. Here’s a list of my favorite notions for quiltmaking:
Olfa Rotary Cutter - says on the package guaranteed forever. I’ve had mine since 1986 and no complaints. Use the 45mm for most projects, the smaller diameter blades for cutting circles. Get the pinking blade insert for clothing or other projects. Save old blades and use them for paper projects. Thou shalt not use the same blades or scissors for fabric as you do for paper. Paper dulls the blades much faster. Dedicate a separate pair of scissors for fabric. NOTE: Never, ever, ever, even for a second, put your rotary cutter down without closing the blade. One of our students lost the tip of her finger when she forgot to close the blade. Another sewer left a blade exposed on the cutting table in our studio when our daughter was a toddler and I still hypervenhilate when I think about it. ALWAYS CLOSE THE BLADE!
Olfa (or O’Lipfa) cutting mat and ruler - also critical for quilters.
Clover seam ripper - we have many seam rippers but this is the one we always look for first. It fits beautifully in the hand.
Clover Bias Tape Maker (25mm) - this brand is far superior to every other brand out there for making bindings for quilts (we describe the technique for using it in the Modern Quilt Workshop).
Schmetz sewing machine needles - universals are great for machine piecing and quilting but have the denim and leather one on hand for making bags or hemming jeans.
John James Millenium Collection needles - we hand sew only sleeves and labels but this collection is excellent for all sewing projects.
daisy head pins - I find these far more ergonomic that ceramic head pins, but you have to keep them away from the iron.
Signature thread - we piece and quilt with Signature thread we buy in cones. Mettler makes beautiful threads but we use so much thread we really have to buy 3,000 yd. cones.
magnetic pin cushion - it’s amazing how helpful this can be. You can sew so much faster when you can just toss your pins in the general direction of the pin cushion and they stick.
schoolboard chalk - great for numbering parts of a quilt once you’ve laid them out. Comes out in the wash easily. If you chalk heavily, presoak before you wash.
Nifty Notions Fine Line Disappearing marker - disappears without washing.
Double-sided tape - to prevent templates from slipping around while cutting.
Scissors - My all-time favorite pair of scissors was purchased in Japan in 1986. The brand is “1910″ (Silky) and in 20 years on quiltmaking they have never needed sharpening. I love the way they feel in my hand and I haven’t found any other brand that I like as much. We have several pair of Fiskars around the studio that are great for general cutting but they don’t cut through batting well. I have a new pair of really small Acme Titanium scissors which are great for snipping curves or loose threads.
A walking foot for your machine - we use this for some piecing and all machine quilting that is done (mostly straight-line stitching or small projects) on our Bernina machine.
Quilter’s Dream Batting - not a notion but everyone always asks me about batting. We only use Quilter’s Dream. They have several lofts of cotton, which is what we use. For occasional charity work we have used their poly/cotton batting and it works well too. It just doesn’t give the pucker that 100% cotton does when it comes out of the dryer. We think Quilter’s Dream cotton has the best drape and is very durable. We have just bought one of their new washable wool battings and can’t wait to give it a try.
T-Fal Iron and the Rowenta Expert Iron - we get a lot of questions about irons. Our T-Fal iron is a workhorse but when a quilt is being sent to a client, we get out the Rowenta Expert Iron, which is the greatest iron ever. Rowenta sent us this iron for us to try otherwise I couldn’t justify spending the equivalent of trans-Atlantic round-trip airfare on an iron. But if you have the money and you do a lot of sewing, there’s nothing better. Beware that our model does not have auto-shut-off and it is an electricity hog so be sure to turn it off the second you’re done with it.
Sakura Pigma Micron .02 pen - this is the pen we use to sign our quilts. We have used the thicker version for signing class quilts. It’s waterproof and fadeproof so won’t run or fade in the wash. It comes in a dozen or so colors and various line widths.
This is my general list. I’m sure readers would love to know your favorites so feel free to post your must-have notions.
Isabel Moltó-Pamplona, Spain- is a versatile multidisciplinary artist: painter, sculptor and textil-jewelry designer.
“Molto’s work reflects her nonstop creative thinking, and the dialog amongst her works. By looking at her jewelry design, paintings, etchings, carpets, one may very well be traveling to the artist’s very own poetic world, on the very road traveled by the artist, being able to perceive all whys and hows of the process”, they enthusiastically complete.”
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Isabel Moltó-Pamplona, España- es una artista versátil y multidisciplinar: pintora, escultora, diseñadora textil y de joyas.
Del trabajo de Moltó dicen que refleja un pensamiento creativo ilimitado. Observando su diseño de joyería, pinturas, aguafuertes,alfombras…Nos trasladamos al mundo poético del artista, percibimos el por qué y el cómo del proceso creativo.
happythings has a really nice, detailed, photo-filled tutorial for making a small chenille-backed patchwork blanket. Start with design and cutting-out, then piecing, sewing on the back, and tying. Very sweet, especially in the lovely reproduction prints she chose.
All buttoned up is a lovely blog. With a big focus on sewing and family and a healthy obsession with fabric and thrifting, it is posts like this and this that keeps me coming back.
I hemmed the legs with My New Favourite Thing, twill tape. Makes a nice cuff as I’m sure they’ll be a little long on him. This is the first in what will hopefully be a long love affair with making pockets. I have avoided them for so long that I had forgotten why I left them out in the first place. They’re easier than they look and there are so many great possibilities. Vive le Pocket!
And together with the easy style of personal mixed with craftyness writing and the clear colourful images - what a super blog!
While it’s cold lots of places in the world, it’s really cold in parts of Canada. Like snowmobiles and icicles and sled dog cold. As someone who has spent many hours huddled next to a radiator in other warmer parts of the world in winter, I can only imagine how cold in must get in some Canadian provinces.
So I’m taking a few minutes to promote a charity I really like, Blankets for Canada, which collects handmade blankets for the less fortunate up in the Great White North. There is a similar program for the US, called Warm Up America!
In case you were wondering what I’ve been doing since my last post, I’ve been working on some pieces to send to Afghans for Afghans. Pictures to come closer to the new November 3rd due date.
