I will be the first to admit I tend to the cool spectrum. My favorite colors are, and probably will always remain, black, purple and silver. According to color theory, that combination makes me creative, mysterious and elegant. Not certain about mysterious and elegant, but creative, definitely. What I don't choose on a regular basis are warm colors. I can't wear them well, so I tend to avoid them at all possible costs. Warm colors are wonderful for kitchens and dining rooms. They're great accent colors, but I tend to use them rarely even when weaving. Unfortunately as a designer of woven wearable art, I can't limited myself to my color choices. I need to create clothes that work well on other skin types and attract other people. Summer Color Scheme Choosing colors such as the ones above can prove frustrating to me. I wouldn't normally choose the colors, but advice was given to me last week that I will take to heart: visit stores in the mall. I'm not o...
I grew up in Lancaster Dutch Country, and moved to Western NY when I was twelve. After returning home for college, I began using both my weaving and writing skills to try and earn an income. Niagara River Above the Falls No such luck for several years, but yesterday I was up at the Castellani Art Museum to learn about the Art Services Initiative and the arts community in the Western five counties of Western NY. For a brief review of Western NY (and New York state in general) you first need to realize that New York City makes up a very small portion of the entire state. It's something like less than ten percent in all honesty. That particular area is referred to as Downstate and includes anything below the northern NY/PA border. Western NY can be a looser term, but it typically is everything west of the Genesee River, or the eight Western counties of NY State (Niagara, Orleans, Genesee, Erie, Wyoming, Allegheny, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua. This area is rich in natu...
Last week, I showed you a dress from material I wove. This week, I'm going to focus on patterns versus no patterns. No Pattern To the right is a photograph of my sister modeling a dress I made from handwoven fabric. In this case, the dress was used with no pattern (i.e. I designed as I went). It is created using five panels, three of which are eight inches shorter than the other two. The longer panels form the front of the dress, and include the casing for the halter strap; the shorter pieces form the back and sides. Benefits For using handwoven fabric, it's fairly easy to say one major benefit is being able to simply design. Knowing how much fabric I had, I could divide the fabric into the panels, adding and subtracting as I went. This works out well when I have fabric, but not exactly certain what I want to do with it. Problems For this particular style of design, having a dressmaker's dummy is almost a necessity. It helped me by giving me a model that didn...
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