rah-rah rustbelt!

Here's a preview of my new collection: rah-rah rustbelt!

today in the studio ... Glompod #389

 

Glompod #389

black, grays, bright green highlights

telecommuting

 

I just want one more day at the dining room table! 

Then I'll lug my "portable" machine back to the studio.

hands and eyes and nonperfection

I'm sewing at home on a snowy day. Small meditative pieces, made from layers of colored thread on linen and canvas and wool, some with sprouting tendrils of thread and tiny spore-like frayed volcanoes. I'm thinking about how uninterested I am in perfection and replicating the work of a machine.  As much as I love them, the more machines I'm surrounded with the more important intuition becomes to my work. I want my hands and my eyes to make things that could only have come from me, here today.  Not imperfection, but non-perfection. Yes is not the opposite of no.

My hands and eyes also have produced a slow-cooker full of potatoes au gratin bubbling in one corner of the kitchen and a dutch oven of veggie chili in the other.  Cornbread is not out of the question. Neither is a nap, after another round of shoveling. I love going to work at my studio every day but once in a while a day that combines comfort food, cocooning in the house and sewing tiny things is a treat.

there's a name for it: glompod

Glompod. It's a favorite word I made up for a favorite bag that I make once in a while.

In the middle of the night a few nights ago I decided that the only thing wrong with them is that they need to say GLOMPOD on them in big letters. Maybe. I might be wrong, but these stencils await me when I today. I like naming things. Sometimes labeling them with their names is good too. We'll see.

Here's one that I made a few weeks ago:





And here is one that I made, according to the internet, in 2010. (Criminy, how long have I been swirling down this rabbit hole of sewing things?)

And here is the top-secret now-I-have-to-kill-you high-tech way I made that first one:

I also have one more that is complete, hanging on a hanger in my studio, made from these colors — rust, gray and acid green — aka the compost pile from which I am currently creating things:

Ummm. That is all.