Still composed, only more so

The Habitat Project is taking form more each day.  Today I worked with Dale Kennedy and Marcus Larsen, composing on the pinboard and the computer.  We think we have it now.  An off center house with a sweet roof.

The official description :

Raising the Roof on Home

By Susan Hensel and clients of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

Hope. Optimism. Generosity.

The clients of Habitat who worked on this project filled the room with their excitement about building houses and creating safe, secure homes for their families.  They were filled with pride in their work , great optimism and hope. They generously contributed their time and talents to this artwork, creating a “crazy quilt” of home.

Fabric decorated with fabric paints, dyes and machine embroidery

More embroidery and serging awaits.  But by mid week next week, assembly will begin.

Feeling somewhat composed

I am still sewing and dyeing to beat the band, but there is enough done to begin composing this radically large thing in earnest.

Dale came over today and started the process.  He pinned up 4 compositions in all.  We determined that we want to group by shape and size; worked with how to have a focal point; determined that there are key negative space issues to keep track of....and other things.

He will return tomorrow and we will compose more then.  Tonight I embroider.

Composition 1

Composition 2

Composition 3

Composition 4

Polar Vortex does not slow us down

As the wind began whipping outside the door, piling small drifts of moister snow than we've had to date,  9 hardy people came to the Textile Center to make more squares for the Habitat for Humanity artwork.  Tomorrow the output will enter the dye pot and begin the trek toward completion.

What is this?

These little squiggles appear all over the studio, clinging to my pants and shoes as I head upstairs to bed.  

What are they?

They are not squashed, nor living, centipedes, though surely they look like that!

They are the static filled tails of waste from the serger that edges each and every module.

Meanwhile, on another note, little drawings are being done from the scraps and off cuts of the modules.  I think they will find a home in the artists book documenting the project that I am going to make for Habitat for Humanity.

Composing on the wall

I'm still waiting for a new grommeting die and the final yardage.  I swept the studio.  I napped.  I read.  And then I began composing.  I decided I could not comfortably wait for all the modules to be grommeted.  I needed to get a move on and see what could be done with these houses!

So, late today, on the 8' x10 ' pinwall, 1/2 the width of the final piece, I began pinning.  The first basic idea is to form a sort of house shaped area with the "face" modules.  Not all the modules are made yet.  They will be completed by late next week.  But I decided I had enough to begin composition studies.

Then I began to play with connecting squares of color.  I had determined that a broad swath of color, like a road or a tree branch, as I had shown in the blog before, would be far to prone to humidity changes and would more than likely warp like the devil with season changes.  So, back to working within the grid to see what can be done to both settle the eye and stabilize the  piece.  I'm not liking my solutions yet, but that is why I scheduled a full month for assembly and problem solving.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?

This is GOOD NEWS!

The crimps have arrived!  This is a modest, quite small bag of goodness: 1000 #2 crimps normally used for framing.  Such a small thing, but without them, the Habitat for Humanity piece would remain in pieces!

This is an empty spool.  It seems somehow momentous to have used every living centimeter of a 1000 meter spool of thread!  Fortunately I had another spool of color #407 on hand!

This is a box of T-pins that I will use to compose the hangings.  It is a suitable use of t-pins leftover from my gallery days and an influx of around 100 more t-pins.

And THIS is 26 more modules awaiting grommets. (total so far = 131 modules) Dale drilled the holes today.  But, alas and alack!  We could not begin grommeting because I chewed up the upper die trying to learn how to efficiently use the machine the other day.  It seems that I applied TOO MUCH FORCE.  The grommets installed after this INCIDENT of TOO MUCH FORCE, installed with chewed-up-square holes.  Hmmm.  Maybe that is why I had sore ribs at bedtime last night!  A new set of dies is already in the mail!

Now...we await the new fabric from Spoonflower.  They are running late this time.  Maybe MLK holiday put them behind schedule.

110 modules and counting

There are now 110 completed modules for the Habitat for Humanity Project!

I finished 31 face modules today.  They aren't actually all faces.  There are some cool ones of working hands.  These modules were created using photos from Habitat for Humanity.  There are photos of clients, volunteers and working hands.  I posterized the photos in Adobe Photoshop,  made 12" square compositions and sent them off to Spoonflower.com to make printed fabric.   They are ready to go, except for the grommets.

More Spoonflower fabric should arrive this week.  I also designed more fabric with text about home, using some of the shared thoughts of clients at the workshop last weekend.  It will make 18 modules.

The next twenty modules have been started, using client designed fabrics.  The purplish fabric is the client fabric.

A stack of 40 12.5 inch squares were cut  last night, shuffled and assembled into striped squares this morning.


I took a break  last night and today!
Last night  I spent time at the spinning wheel, smoothing out my rough edges with soft, pure angora.
This afternoon I went to a marvelous show at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.  It was a fiber show, "Repetition and Ritual".

This evening I cut and shuffled the squares again  and cut 40 pieces of featherweight pellon for assembly tomorrow.

All of this is to say, by the end of the coming week, I should be up to 148 modules, with or without grommets.

Getting close!  I figure I need 160 modules to do a good job.  The client fabrics from the upcoming workshop should complete the job.

WOW!  I think I may be on time after all!

My schedule was to complete modules by the end of January and spend the month of February assembling  and problem solving.  Dale and I did a lot of prep work for that last week.  He has been my "go to guy" for years when I have big projects.  He will be gone most of February, but I am feeling confidant that the assembly will proceed well  with the preplanning that we did.

Still waiting for the crimps, though.