Organization Bomb

Showing you my studio space is helping to to understand what needs organization and how I would like to achieve it. Embroidery and stitch have become really important to me. I had skeins of thread tucked in several different places, hand dyed skeins were in 3 ring binders, I had a box of floss organized by color tucked into another storage bin, and stuffed all around that, more skeins.

So I bought 4 organizer boxes and a couple extra bobbins and got to work. 

Or, erm, um. I put everyone to work! My mother got in the act, David even lent a hand, all together, we used 125 bobbins. Now, all of the thread is organized and grouped by color. I integrated each type of floss, cotton, silk and rayon, variegated and solid. I am preparing to dye gradations of colors and now I can see what colors I need. I filled 3 of the 4 boxes I bought for the purpose.

Phew. When I first opened the shipment and looked at my purchase of plastic, I was disappointed that I bought plastic in the first place. I was almost in a panic about it! I convinced myself that I wouldn’t like the look of the thread in the boxes, that there was probably another way to organize that I hadn’t thought of that would be better. But then the threads started looking like candies, grouped together with their fellows and I knew that my neat and orderly side had been appeased.

I honestly feel that keeping tidy helps me be a more prolific artist. Beside which, living in a tiny apartment really forces me to be neat and organized. I like knowing where every last thing is. I like being able to reach for a box of red embroidery thread, beads organized by color and size (at one point Deb Lacativa called this a bead prison! LOL. While I appreciate the sentiment, I do like bead prisons), I like being able to remove a drawer and bring it to my workbench and return it again. 

I often hear comments that folks have messy studio space. What is your space like? Does it work for you? Inspire you? Does it make your work easier?

My Studio Summer 2012

I haven’t really shown you my ‘studio’ in a long time, and I think I am well past due in sharing my space with you. Since we moved to our tiny apartment in Brooklyn, we have been redefining and recreating our space on a regular basis. It used to be that the sewing portion of my studio was housed in what might otherwise be considered a walk in closet off the bedroom, but David now has the roost of that room (which is a good thing). If you would like to see my old ‘studio space’, check out this video.

I am very excited about this new work space. There have been piles and piles on this table for months and while I know this is useful in its own right, piles are visually disruptive to me and I need the habit to stop.  At the same time, I know that if I have the ability to paint at a moments notice, I will. So having items related to painting, all neat and organized will help me tremendously.

I can get pretty obsessive about organization, I keep eyeballing the stuff stored way high up and wondering if there is a better way to reconfigure that stuff. Hmmm.

In the meantime, boy am I enjoying stitching!

A Brooklyn day plus reconstruction!

Oh my goodness have I been having fun making stuff. I am exploring the concept of deconstructing, reconstructing and constructing. When we reconstruct our bodies after breast cancer, we can have procedures where you move fat from one part of the body to another, you can cut a flap of muscle and rearrange it, who knew? Flaps. Moving. Buttons. Pockets. Closures. My idea of cloth, clothing, textiles and medical procedure lingo are colliding. Clothing has become my canvas.

I am sewing wherever I go. Seen here with my Gather your Sew-plies purse in action. You can also see my Boro Bag/Hip Bag. I am preparing a new classes centered around embroidery and bag making. We will dye our own threads and use the inspiration around us to embroider our stories, circumstance, and daily lives on cloth.

I am designing a new hip bag, one that can be worn  along with the Sew-plies Purse and will hold a small project-I have to enable this creative tangent. It is a tangent. Graffitti is a tangent, don’t you think? So why not embroider in a graffiti like fashion all over my clothing. Soon, I won’t be wearing a backpack at all, I will have small art bags, holding my sewing essentials, strapped to my body.

I don’t think these two bags really go together, but they are helping me to define a criteria for the next bag.

Lady Liberty. I love me some her. What a beautiful female symbol she is. In the middle of our harbor. A gentle womanly soul, hand held high.

Yup, I like her.

I spied a stencil and David snappend a photo of Mr. T? Who is that? 

Boy did I walk alot yesterday. I met up with my good friend Erin, and we wandered. We sat at the promenade and talked. We looked at the skyline, we shot the breeze. Then I met up with David and we walked down to the beach in Red Hook. I sat and sewed in front of Lady Liberty. David took photos of his shoe laces and asked me to use one of the images, perhaps just the shape as a motif.

How could a girl resist?

We got Limonata, too. That is my sinful indulgence right now. I love them. They are tart. Almost freeze them, and drink straight from the can.

On our way home, David and I stopped at Union Max. And NABBED two printed blouses. But look at that collar, my goodness. I have already deconstructed it,

changed the collar to peter pan styling, reattached it. And just because I was there, removed the bust darts.

By the way, this shirt is printed gaberdine. When I was growing up, I remember people talking about gaberdine, it was very exciting at the time. Do you have memories about cloth like this?

I am back!

I came home from Quilting by the Lake tired but Energized. I have three different Sew-plies purses going at the same time, this is just one. I made the Yellow/Red/ Brown/Pink cloth with the Eye-Love graffiti symbol, while I was away last week and now, feel the need to use it quickly.

I also rearranged my sewing area and really like the new configuration, it is much more usable now. Though it does make me want to rearrange the art on the wall. Funny how things spiral like that. It will be good to rearrange. Perhaps Saturday. I think a studio update is in order, don’t you? It is quite different than the last time I blogged about it.

QBL 2012 was great. The greatest women took my class. They were all open, willing, attentive to instruction and chat and they seemed to soak information up.  I mean look at all those smiles. Yeah, they are giving me devil horns, but who would expect less? For more photos check Facebook.

QBL has an auction to raise monies for its scholarship program. They ask each teacher to make an apron. I soaked mine in soda ash and began working on it in class. My students gathered round, they watched me print this. I used freezer paper cut outs of their hands. I asked for both right and left and they gave them, sometimes with wrists,  sometimes cut to the palm. Interesting. They watched me juxtapose my letters and they never said a thing. I mean, I don’t know if the typo set a malaise on the class or what. I pinned it to the wall and kept looking at it. 

While the class was in session a tour bus comes on thursday and three groups are walked through each studio and you talk your class up and invite them to ask questions about you or your art approach, it is like, ‘a few minutes in the studio with Melly’. One of the nice tour ladies pointed out my mistake.

You know me, I am thinking, ‘why didn’t anyone tell me!’ I fret. I want a new apron, I want to do it over. I briefly thought of asking Lindsey for a new one. And then I cut an arrow stamp, and I fixed it. Just like I kept telling my students to do all week, to push an idea, to try something new.

It raised a goodly amount of money too. That was a fun event.

Kass Hall’s Zentangle Untangled

Kass Hall just came out with Zentangle Untangled and I have to say, her book made me understand Zentangles. They really are inspirational and ever so meditative. For me, drawing is meditative, but to do it purposely to that end is a very healing thing indeed. For this fact alone I recommend Kass’s book, but I recommend it for many other reasons as well.

I like Kass. We began talking last year before her book was released and we share an experience of using art to heal the self through cancer treatment. Kass is another strong woman, so I honor her for just this reason alone, as if I need a reason!  😀

We caught up on Skype last night and then continued the conversation through email. Where she said, 

‘Personally, Zentangle has been very therapeutic for me and has helped me a lot through my cancer last year and prior to that. Having that to focus on (and be so portable) has been a real benefit to my coping with illness. I find I really am able to zone out from the world and even my own thoughts when I am drawing – sometimes I haven’t even noticed the phone ringing!’

I couldn’t agree more. I used writing Dreaming from the Journal Page as a catalyst to get me through treatment. It helped me to switch my doctors appointments into interruptions from writing, so that writing, making art, drawing, painting pages, was the goal. Going to doctors appointments were needed but not the all consuming goal it could have been had the universe not given me a contract during the same week as being given a major diagnosis. Kass found out she had her 4th bout of cancer 6 weeks before her book deadline. And she traversed those waters with grace and gave us a fabulous text in spite of and because of her experience.

 

Zentangle Untangled: Inspiration and Prompts for Meditative Drawing is a great book. If you would like to begin using art as a means to heal, as a balm for the frenetic energy of our crazy fast world, this book is for you. 

Here is the list of Blog Hop Links: 

Redux of Redux

I am participating in a blog hop while I am away, it starts tomorrow, Monday, July 23.

Here is the list of Blog Hop Links: 

The Over Achiever + Gone Fishin’

OK wait, The above photo shows the ‘Cuff Before’ photograph. Now onto the back story.

 You haven’t fully met this shirt yet, but you aren’t going to meet it now either. Not fully anyway, just enough so that you can get up to speed in my creative life. You see, it is crazy at Casa Melly. I am preparing for QBL, relaxing some before a full week of teaching, I am wearing this blouse right now and I don’t want to take it off, photograph it and start over. So there you have it. You get to meet this shirt in the middle instead of at the beginning.

This shirt is an over achiever. Basically Mod-oDoc, the company who made it, wanted this shirt to have all the bells and whistles it possibly could. So it has cargo like pockets, side pockets at the waist, extra wide cuffs, a collar and collar stand, a double button placket, tabs with buttons so you can roll up the sleeves and button them in place. That is a lot of stuff to be going on in one shirt. I think this is their version of cruise-wear and I am making changes on it left and right.

Oh! It also used to have flaps to close the two cargo pockets at the chest, I forgot to mention that because they were first thing to come off.

So: I halfed the cuffs. Doesn’t it look better being short and tidy? This fabric is very soft, does anyone know the name of it? It is almost like heirloom stitched needle hole embroidery.

removed the collar but left the collar stand.

And I am using a multicolor stencil to embroider a rose design up over the right breast pockets, around the back yoke, and perhaps a few sprigs draping down the left shoulder seam, I don’t know yet.

So, I will be scarce for a week. I will be teaching at QBL. I am teaching at The Clever Guild and I will not be updating this blog. I will be having fun and I will take photos so that I can share what I am up to when I return. 

I took this photo before removing the collar.

I am officially, Gone Fishin’

Move those labels.

 Eucalyptus dyed silk satin over linen, replaced label. Soon to become a strap for a Gather your Sew-plies purse, hippie style. I am moving labels around within my wearable art pieces. Very excited by the idea.

My medias are mixing, it can be quite confusing. My orderly nature rebels, but the stuff I am making? Awe-some. I love when I feel good about the stuff I am making.

It is difficult to remain tidy. Maybe the definition of tidy changes per project. Stencils on top of embroidery floss, works for me.

Brown glass buttons sold along side chocolate, I don’t understand the connection, perhaps the color brown? Both yum.

Kailey, my intern, helping me prepare for Quilting by the Lake next week. Can I tell you how much I admire and like Kailey? She is a sweetheart. Really, I just wanted her here, I hope she got as much out of coming as I did in having her. A few months back she came and we made cloth for her final high school project, this month, Kailey came to help me. I Lurve her.

New haircut! I look spankin’.