The Road to Textiles
Cheerful embroidered artist from the 1950s.
My mom must have started me on the road to art appreciation and textile love when she embroidered this bib for me when I was a baby.
When I was 5 years old, she kept me busy by teaching me to cross stitch on a scrap of fabric.
My first cross stitch from age 5,
At seven or eight, I started knitting lessons with a lady down the street – my mom’s way of giving me something “grown-up” to do while at the same time providing some regular company for a widow lady who loved children.
In college, I was an art major with a goal of becoming an art therapist. I had taken all the requisite art classes but needed one more, and took weaving. We used cheap manmade yarns in ugly colors, but I fell in love with the process and possibilities, and knew I had found my place.
My first piece of weaving
When you do something odd like weaving, people ask you to work at their festival/event/troop meeting to demonstrate the craft. Then other people assume that if you know something odd like weaving, you know lots of other things and they ask you questions about processing flax, spinning dog hair, the Industrial Revolution, and what to do with grandma’s old brocade curtains. So I started looking up the answers to these questions and I learned some of the depth and breadth of the textile world.
Along the way, I have also learned to crochet, spin, weave, sew, make baskets, cane chairs, and quilt. I love textiles because of the way they add beauty, character, comfort, or humor to objects that could be merely utilitarian. Textile crafters through the ages have always made objects that are better and more distinctive than they have to be. This blog is my place to share what I know about textiles and to connect and learn from other artisans.
