“Hurray! I can finally post to WordPress.”
That was what I wrote in my first ever TextileFusion blog post in March 2005, and I feel the same way in March 2021, after a year of my website and blog being lost in the ether. Thank you, Jungo Solutions, for getting TextileFusion.com back up and running.
Over the next months, I’m going to retro-post the best of my old blog, going back to that very first post, sixteen years ago.
Here’s more from March 2005, about an early TextileFusion piece, Iced Water at the Café Rouge:
Spinning Iced Water
A member of The Hallamshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers, in Sheffield, England, issued a challenge to the rest of us. She would give us ramie fiber. We had to spin it and make it into something. This was the beginning of Iced Water at the Cafe Rouge, though I didn’t know it at the time.
I spun the white ramie by itself first. I carded it with varying amounts of gray or black and spun different shades of gray. I plied plain ramie with gray, too. Here’s the range of colors I got.
Knitting Iced Water
Once the spinning was done, I got out my trusty Ultimate Sweater Machine (formerly the Incredible Sweater Machine, as seen on TV! And before that, it was known as the Bond Knitting Frame). I knitted a long piece of fabric, which shaded gradually from light to dark. This is it, in progress. For shaded knitting, I knit one to three rows of one color, then change. The USM carriage is designed to make changing colors easy.
I washed the finished knitting, pinned it out to dry, and then ironed fusible interface to it.
Piecing Iced Water
I spun the yarn, knitted it, and stabilized the knitting with iron-on interfacing. Then I cut the knitting into irregular patches and pieced them together onto a foundation of light cotton fabric. The yellow paper blocks out the space where I would put the vase.
Once the pieces were arranged to my satisfaction, I machine sewed them to the foundation with a zig-zag stitch. Finally, I quilted the piece, embellished with embroidery, applique (netting or tulle, and crochet), and buttons, and bound the edges.
Iced Water on Display
The Guilford Handcraft Center in Guilford, Connecticut, will be exhibiting the Mixed Media Quilts Show starting March 13, 2005, and my knitted quilt Iced Water at the Cafe Rouge will be in it! It is one of my best pieces ever and I’m very proud of it.
If you live up that way, I hope you’ll go and see the show.