How Not to Waste a Scrap

I recently found a set of twelve unfinished patchwork pieces in the Dresden Plate pattern. I scooped these up from the bottom of a bin at the Goodwill Dig, knowing I had absolutely no use for them. But the thought of these Depression Era fabrics ending up in a ragger’s bundle made me so sad I had to rescue them.

All the fabrics are 1930s dress fabrics or feedsack fabrics. Some of the fabrics are the same but in different colors, like the blue and green examples above. Maybe a mother made matching dresses for her little girls – blue for one girl and green for the other. And since that same design is also present in red and in purple, maybe there were four daughters.

What really impressed me the most is that some of the pieces are actually pieced from even smaller scraps. The center piece above is made from five tiny scraps, some of them much smaller than an inch in width and length. The maker really knew how to use up every tiny bit of the precious material.

Amazingly, these designs were all pieced by hand. Do you see why I just had to rescue these?

In my own sewing, one of the things I hate facing is the large amount of unusable scrap fabric left over from the cutting. I’m not a quilter, and for the most part, don’t indulge in fiddly crafts that use tiny scraps of fabric. I do make lots of pillows, and all my scraps are cut even smaller to make filling. After reading about how much textile waste ends up in the trash dumps of the world, I can’t bear to add to the problem.

I know that in some areas there is textile recycling. And if worst comes to worst, scraps can be donated to Goodwill where they end up in the ragger’s bundles.  Are there any other ideas?

So now I have twelve pieces of Dresden plate, which I don’t need. I’d love to pass them on to someone who will actually use them, and that person has been located. Thanks, Joni, for taking these off my hands!

A few of the pieces have stains. This is the worst one I have noted.

 

 

 

Project – Handwoven Belt

I hesitated before writing this post because I’m sure it’s going to give some of you the impression that I have too much time on my hands.  It is true that I no longer have to show up at a workplace at 7:55 every morning, but I find there are always interesting ways to spend one’s time.  And while a little weaving was fun, I don’t think I could take a steady diet of it.

I wisely chose to do a project that would be quick.  The actually weaving of the strip for the belt was accomplished over the course of an afternoon, interspersed with other tasks.  I just could not keep it up for longer than about five minutes or so.  Something has definitely been messing with my attention span.

I used a light blue cotton yarn for the warp and a darker blue wool yarn for the weft.  I haven’t quite gotten the knack of keeping each row of weft pressed down evenly, but I found that I could adjust the thin spots with my fingers after the weaving was finished.

I already had a nice leather and buckle piece that I’d saved from an old belt where the canvas was in poor shape.  I’m always picking up things like that when I run across them at the thrifts.  One never knows what will be useful!

My weaving would not be sturdy enough on its own, so I needed to interface and back it with another fabric.  I just happened to have a piece of Liberty Tana lawn that was the right size.  Another thing I always buy when I see them are Liberty neckties.  There is an amazing amount of fabric in a tie, well worth the fifty cents they usually cost in thrifts.

After cutting the interfacing to the right width (a couple of millimeters less than my woven piece) I wrapped the cotton fabric around it and pressed the cotton to fit.

I then stitched the backing to my woven piece.  I waxed the thread for a bit of body.

I trimmed the edges and secured the loose ends through all three layers.

There were already stitch holes in the leather where the original canvas was sewn on.  I used the very same holes for my stitches.  I used silk buttonhole twist, again waxed for strength and body.

When expert leather workers hand stitch, they use two needles and two strands of thread that go through the holes from opposite sides.  It makes for a strong stitch, but I did it the easy way, doing every other hole and them going back in the other direction.  Here I am half way and ready to reverse my path of stitches.

And here it is all finished.  It actually was a very quick project, with maybe two hours total in the making.

And here’s a photo showing how it looks when worn.

This may be my one and only weaving project, but I’m glad I did this one.  I like the belt, and I have a new appreciation for all the work that women used to have to put into the production of garments.

 

 

Shaping Craft + Design at Black Mountain College

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, as in the case of Black Mountain College.  One of the last places one might expect to find a progressive thinking school, and in many ways the heir of the Bauhaus, would be a small Appalachian town.  But in 1933, the college was formed using the principles of progressive education as envisioned by educator John Dewey.

It was to be a school where students were not to be saddled with the worry of grades, but instead were encouraged to find their own way through a study of the liberal arts.  Central to this study was the incorporation of art and craft, so much so that Black Mountain  is often mistakenly thought to have been an art school.

Also in 1933, Hitler and the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus, and so artist and teacher Josef Albers and his wife, weaver Anni Albers, were invited to join the faculty at Black Mountain.   Until the school closed in 1957 it was a hotbed of creativity, with the faculty and workshop teachers a who’s who of modern art and craft..

Today the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center works to preserve the legacy of the college.  Located in downtown Asheville, it is a little gem of a museum which features changing exhibitions dedicated to the work that came out of the college.  Just ended was a showing of some of the crafts produced by the college’s teachers and students.

The cover of the exhibition catalog, shown above, is a weaving by Don Page, Orange Fabric with Changing Threads.  It, and the piece below, Delicate Fabric with Stretched Threads, were made while Page was a student under Anni Albers at Black Mountain in the late 1930s.

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This weaving was made by student Lore Kadden Lindenfeld as a student at the college in the late 1940s.  Both student’s work follow Anni Alber’s insistence that form must follow function.

Above you can see a notebook of the designs from the weaving class, 1935, and a woven linen sample by Andy Oates.

This shuttle loom was an original from the black Mountain College Weaving Workshop, and has recently been restored.

Of course I was most interested in the textiles, but there were many fascinating objects from other crafts.  This hanging wire sculpture was made by artist Ruth Asawa.

Okay, I’m sorry, but I forgot to note the name and artist of this print, and I can’t figure it out from the catalog.  But I had to show it because it is so reminiscent of one of my all time favorite textile prints, A Fish Is a Fish by Ken Scott.

And finally, my new favorite chair, Lady Murasaki’s Fan Chair, by Robert Bliss.