In the Studio: Cotswolds Sunset

After two months, I went back into the studio. Holiday travel, work schedules and lack of motivation conspired to extend this hiatus from my studio for more weeks than I would have liked. It seemed normal to not be in the studio. For me, this felt very wrong. 

Cotswolds Sunset, Kona cotton, 10” square, February, 2019.

Even if I was not sitting in front of my sewing machine or cutting mat, I was thinking about the sunset photo I wrote about in the article British Landscapes. The day dreaming revolved around the colors where the shadows in the grass field made the landscape appear dark brown and the sky had about 1,000 shades of lavender, pink and magenta. How do I turn this into fabric art?

I really had no answers when I walked into the studio but knew I had procrastinated enough when I called the cable company and the repair man for our blinds. Time was up. Why DO people procrastinate doing things they really DO want to do? So I got myself into the studio.

First, I got out my fabric bins and looked at the sunset photo for inspiration. I selected 3 pinks, light, dark and medium. The grassy field colors were trickier. This was a fallow field where sheep had grazed. In other words, some dirt and some grass left over from the sheep uneaten. I selected an olive, a dark green and a color called raisin which is like a dark purple. Again, a light, medium and dark color. 

For the design, I wanted a horizon line and a lighter color on top of the line to represent the setting sun. As for the rest, these three colors for the sky and ground need to be interrelated but not horizontal lines. The old trick of sewing wedges of fabric together to make a rectangle appeared out of nowhere in my mind. 

Then I started cutting wedges and sewed them together alternating the colors for above and below the horizon.  Last step, sew the sky to the land.

One of my friends who reads these articles asked me once, “Why don’t you ever tell us how to sew together a project?” Reading the article makes her want to sew something but she doesn’t know how. A long time ago, I decided I would not write tutorials or step by step guides. I wanted to write articles to inspire people to create their own way in their own style. However, if you are looking for a sewing project that is fun to make, this could be it. I love process based projects. So I have outlined the process I used below.

  •  Pick your fabric - at least 3 colors, light, medium and dark colored fabrics for two groups. One group of 3 for the upper section and one group of 3 for the lower section.

  • Cut wedges of fabric- length can be whatever you want. I used 13” for the length and then the wedges vary from 2-4 “ wide. I do not measure but cut intuitively.

  • Sew 2 wedges together- stagger the wedges and sew the smaller side to the wider side so it makes a rectangle.  

  • Sew the pairs of strips together- make your project as big as you want.  

  • Get ready to display the final project-wrap it around a stretched canvas and staple or put in a frame.  


    Let me know if you try this at home.  😄

Upper Left to Right: Fabric bins, Wedges for fields, Sewing wedges together, Sewing groups of wedges together.

Lower section: Sky and land cut to 13” and ready to sew together at the horizon.

Anni Albers Exhibition at the Tate Modern Review

The exhibition poster byline for this Anni Albers exhibition at the Tate Modern says it all.

South of the Border, Anni Albers, woven cotton and wool, 1958. Close up.

An artist who changed weaving. A weaver who changed art.

I appreciate when people can summarize a very large subject matter into a few words.  The exhibition was superb. It was meticulously detailed following the chronology of her life, from the Bauhaus days in Berlin as a student (where she met and married the color theorist Josef Albers who was teaching there), to Black Mountain College in North Carolina after she and her husband Josef Albers left Berlin due to the Nazi threat and the closure of the Bauhaus school, to moving to New Haven as her husband taught at Yale art school, to print making as the loom became too physically demanding. The Tate Modern had glorious examples of each time period of her life.

I had heard about Anni Abers through reading quilt blogs over the years. For obvious reasons, many quilters have gravitated to Anni Albers’s work because of the similarities of materials and her busting out of the weaving traditions, just like the modern quilters have over the past few decades. Her work is geometric and colorful. Everything quilters love. She started thinking of weaving as an art form to put on the wall. Quilters went through this same process. Annie was an innovator who has helped bring weaving into the art world. She was the first weaver to have an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1949. How did she get into weaving? The Bauhaus (male) staff steered the women students into weaving as they thought that more appropriate (!@&!#). Luckily for us, Annie thrived in the so-called “Women’s Workshop.” Once they got to Black Mountain College, Anni started teaching weaving. Some of the wives of the professors, like Anni Albers, taught classes but were never paid as staff. Anni Albers, like Josef Albers have influenced generations of future artists.

Top row: Study for DO I, DO V, and DO II, Anni Albers, Gouache on photo paper, 1973.

Bottom row: Left- Sunny, Anni Albers, cotton and linen, 1965

Bottom row: Right- Intersecting, Anni Albers, cotton and rayon, 1962.

She was an original thinker and innovator. She played with new ways to weave using the thread as sinuous lines, knots as part of the design, using different types of materials for different effects like silk for a sheen. She envisioned using textiles as divider walls, sound protection in auditoriums. She was a thinker who often thought outside of the box. I find that inspiring.

The Tate Modern has an exhibition guide with all the written material from the exhibit walls. If you like Anni Abers, this is a must.  Anni Albers Exhibition guide

The Tate Modern has Seven Life Hacks from Anni Albers. You should click that link and read it. Here is a quote from the life hacks to entice you to read it.

Well you all know how great art can affect you, you breathe differently.

-  Anni Albers, 1982

If you still want more, you can purchase the Anni Albers exhibition catalog which has all the images of her art from the exhibition.

Why am I adding all these links? I only touched on a few highlights of the exhibition in this article. If you are at all interested in this fascinating artist, I want you to be able to find this info. There has not been a lot of info available about Anni Albers in the past. I know because I have googled about her in the past. This is a treasure trove of insights into Anni Albers and also just how to be an original artist.

 

Upper row: Left- Drawing for a knot, Anni Albers, Goache on paper, 1948. Right- South of the Border, Anni Albers, woven cotton and wool, 1958.

Bottom row: Left- Red and Blue Layers, Anni Albers, cotton, 1954. Right- Black, White Yellow, designed by Anni Albers in 1926, rewoven in 1960s by Gunta Stolzl under direction of Albers since original destroyed in WW2, cotton and silk.

What inspires me?

Her use of color and texture.

Her original thinking.

Her geometric designs.

I have included some of my favorite images of the exhibit in photo collages. If you click the image, you can see a larger view. I particularly love the colors and design of South of the Border. I included a closeup to show how she bundled some of the strings together. As someone who gravitates to horizontally trending abstract landscapes, I have been thinking of how to use this piece as inspiration for my own fabric art sewing cotton fabric together. This will be fun noodling around the studio on this project.

My goal is to make you curious to learn more about Anni Albers and you have many places and links above to start your curiosity meanderings. Have fun.